The VARIABLE keyword introduces a variable definition section. The name can be any symbolic name starting with a letter or an underscore character and including any letter or number. It can be used in output instructions to distinguish variable statistics as explained in the OUTPUT instruction format. The optional WEIGHT instruction introduces a numeric weight whose default value is 1. Weights are normalized between variables so that only their relative value matters. The use of weights in the computation of the global score is explained in the introduction. All instructions following VARIABLE will pertain to that variable until the next VARIABLE instruction.