skipcount = -1 song = ['always', 'look', 'on', 'the','bright','side','of', 'life'] for sing in song: if sing == 'look' and skipcount <= 0: print (sing) skipcount = 3 elif skipcount > 0: skipcount = skipcount - 1 continue elif skipcount == 0: print ('a' + sing) skipcount = skipcount - 1 else: print (sing)