Error for IF statements in Sugarcube

Sorry for all the questions today but I'm trying to move from harlowe to Sugarcube and I have so many questions. Okay. First:

In Harlowe I set a variable: $preference: "Blue" for instance.

{(if: $preference is "blue")[Awesome](if: $preference is "red")[Yup](if: $preference is "both")[sweet]}

!

Now. In Sugarcube I'm not sure that I can remove the whitespace(?) which is accomplished by the curly braces in Harlowe. If I can't, I will have to figure out another solution. As that would make the entire formatting in Sugarcube visually appalling. (How would I do such a thing?)

Next, the code I've written in sugarcube keeps kicking errors to me.

Error: cannot find a closing tag for macro <<if>>

<<if $preference is "men">>him
<<if $preference is "women">>her
<<if $preference is "both">>him<</if>

also tried

<<if $preference is "men">>him<</if>
<<if $preference is "women">>her<</if>
<<if $preference is "both">>him<</if>

Thanks for all your help. #sigh