about strings, see :ref:`textseq`.
-.. function:: sum(iterable[, start])
+.. function:: sum(iterable, /, start=0)
Sums *start* and the items of an *iterable* from left to right and returns the
- total. *start* defaults to ``0``. The *iterable*'s items are normally numbers,
- and the start value is not allowed to be a string.
+ total. The *iterable*'s items are normally numbers, and the start value is not
+ allowed to be a string.
For some use cases, there are good alternatives to :func:`sum`.
The preferred, fast way to concatenate a sequence of strings is by calling