In general, you tell Stata what to do by typing commands at the ``.'' in the Command window. You do not need to type the ``.'' before the command. The form of all commands is
command var1 var2 ..., option1 option2 ...The command is the command you want to execute, options (each option separated by a space) tell Stata how you want to execute the command, and the list of vars (each variable name separated by a space) are the variables to use in performing this command. For example,
graph x1, hist bin(10)specifies that the graph to be produced is a histogram of x1 with 10 bins. End all commands by hitting the ``Return'' key. If a command goes beyond one line, keep typing -- the display will continue into the next line, and the command will not execute until you hit ``Return''.