2.1 Syntactic rules used in the manual

Here are the rules we tried to follow when writing this reference manual. Note that metasyntactic variable definitions stay valid throughout the manual (and not only in the sections where the definitions appear).

1. Keywords and literal symbols are printed like this.
2. Metasyntactic variables (i.e., text bits that are not part of the syntax, but stand for other text bits) are printed like this.
3. A colon (:) after a metasyntactic variable separates the variable from its definition.
4. Optional rules are enclosed in < > pairs.
5. Multiple choices are separated by |.
6. Three dots (…) indicate a possible (multiple) repetition of the preceding rule.