Answer by Matthew Champion for java Syntax error on token "(", ; expected

As stated by ratchet freak, you need to move the function out of main. The function itself belongs to the Assignment1 class and as such needs to be:

import javax.swing.JOptionPane;public class Assignment1{    public static void main(String args[])    {        String input = JOptionPane.showInputDialog("Enter a string");        if (istPalindrome(input))        {            JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null,input+"is a palindrome");        }        else{            JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null ,input +"is not a palindrome");        }    }    public static boolean istPalindrome(String a)/*error is here*/    {        char[] charArray = a.toCharArray();        int i1 = 0;        int i2 = a.length() - 1;        while (i2 > i1) {            if (charArray[i1] != charArray[i2]) {                return false;            }++i1;            --i2;        }        return true;    }}

I've also changed the variable "word" over to "a" (for the statements word.toCharArray() and word.length()) due to the fact that there is no "word" variable in scope within that function.