> the verbose syntax of COBOL programs also allowed for the use of longer identifiers Virtually every Cobol site out there also requires programmers to prepend

> the verbose syntax of COBOL programs also allowed for the use of longer identifiers Virtually every Cobol site out there also requires programmers to prepend their user-defined names with some mnemonic, e.g. pg5005-this-paragraph lv-this-local-variable acpr7502-all-variables-in-programs-in-accounting-system-payroll-subsystem This also means they never confuse user-defined names and program keywords.