Mary's version definitely sounds better. I didn't really sing it through or even play the MIDI on mine <g>, I just typed in the notes. Still, for the purpose of example, it's good to have both versions to compare, since alternate codings have been used. I thought about using triplets but then didn't do it for some reason. Note that Mary's coding

G3/4F//E3/4D//

is musically identical to my

G/>F/ E/>D/

except that she had beamed them as a single group and I beamed them as two sets of two notes each. The characters < and > serve to indicate the same broken rhythm as expressly specifying each note duration. According to Guido Gonzato's wonderful manual

When a note is dotted and the following is halved or vice versa, we're talking of broken rhythm. It's
obtained using the characters ">" or "<" between two notes.
When you use ">", the first note is dotted (that is, its duration increases by half) and the following note
is halved. The opposite with "<". To indicate a note followed by two or more dots, use ">>", ">>>"
and so on.

ABC+, as you will discover, offers a simple and powerful way to create scores and MIDI files for music ranging from a simple melody line or lead sheet to elaborate scores for large ensembles.

      - Mark