To run a sequence of commands, place them on separate lines:
echo "What is your name?"
read name
echo "Hello, $name."
or put semicolons between them:
echo "What is your name?"; read name; echo "Hello, $name."
To split a command across multiple lines, put a \ (backslash) at the end of each partial line:
echo \
"What is your name?"
To run a command in the background (the shell does not wait for it to complete before executing more commands), put & on the end of the command line:
/usr/local/sbin/daemon &
A command is run in a subshell (the shell forks itself and runs the command from the child shell, allowing some separate redirection or other shell environment changes without affecting the current shell) if it is put in parentheses:
(/usr/local/sbin/daemon </dev/null >/var/log/daemonlog 2>&1) &