These characters are reserved to ELM's internal operation and cannot be used in any model, variable, logsum, or parameter name:
| . | (period) | Signals a table name. |
| ~ | (tilde) | Signals a spread parameter. |
| ! | (exclamation point) | Reserved for future use. |
| @ | (at sign) | Signals a node/alternative name. |
| # | (hash) | Signals a node/alternative code number. |
| $ | (dollar sign) | Signals the model name that contains this item. |
| % | (percent) | Signals the model name to which this item refers (i.e. class-specific parameters in a latent class model). |
| ^ | (carat) | Signals a quantitative variable. (MNLZ models) |
| & | (ampersand) | Signals a logsum parameter. |
| * | (asterisk) | Signals a quantitative scaling (theta) parameter in an NLZ model. |
| () | (parenthesis) | Reserved for future use. |
| {} | (curly braces) | Reserved for future use. |
| [] | (square brackets) | Reserved for future use. |
| ; | (semicolon) | Reserved for future use. |
| • | (bullet) | Reserved for future use. |
| | | (pipe) | Reserved for future use. |
| ° | (degree) | Reserved for future use. |
Other symbols may become reserved in the future. However, the upper and lower case roman alphabet, arabic numerals, and the underscore character will always be available for use in any type of name.