As mentioned before, there are ten frames to complete to make up a game. Every pin you knock over in one frame will be tallied. If you fail to make a strike, you get another chance to take the rest of the pins down.
The score sheets look sort of like graph paper with spaces for individual names and a row of ten frames next to them. Each frame has three sections, two small boxes above one larger box.
Let us say that on your first try you knocked down three (this is written in the top left-hand box on the second frame), your second try you knocked down four(written in the top right-hand box); that would give you a score of seven for that frame and the number seven is written in the lower section.
The total score of each frame will be added to the next frame. Simple right? It is simple if you do not make a strike or a spare.
The top of the scoring frames are in two sections for the reason that if you were to knock all the pins down in one fell swoop, a strike, you are entitled to add your next two tries as a bonus or a mark to the total score in that frame. A spare entitles you to add your next try only. The top boxes make it easier to keep track. The bottom section is the total of both tries and marks.
Strikes are not recorded in the top sections as the number 10, but as an X in the right-hand box. Spares are recorded with the first try's number in the left-hand box and then a half an X or a diagonal slash in the right-hand box. For example, if you get a strike in your first frame, you would mark an X in the right-hand box of the top section. Your score for now is ten plus the next two tries; no score is penciled in until after the next two tries. The second frame you knock down two on your first try and four on your second try. The total of those two tries is added to your first frame making a total of sixteen and it is recorded in the bottom section of that frame. That total carries over and is added to the total of your second frame and you record twenty-two. If you bowl a spare or strike on the tenth frame, you have one or two extra tries respectively to complete the scoring.
The bonuses for strikes can boost your score tremendously or not. If the two tries after a strike adds up to only two, you only get a total of twelve for your strike. But if you make strikes in the next two tries, your first strike is worth thirty points! Thirty points in each frame makes the perfect game of 300.