you probably won ' t get into any trouble doing this , but strictly speaking , names beginning with an underscore are reserved . from the c 99 standard Reserved Identifiers All identifiers that begin with an underscore and either an uppercase letter or another underscore are always reserved for any use . All identifiers that begin with an underscore are always reserved for use as identifiers with file scope in both the ordinary and tag name spaces . <| sep |> The moment you let go is when the healing starts . The longer you wait , the longer the process will begin . <| sep |> Indeed , you are probably correct , I just took an easy number as an example . I just wanted to illustrate the problem . <| sep |> That would be disappointing . If someone were haunted by the ghost of an author that eventually wrote a story . that was terrible and not scary at all .