[latexrefman] \@var{some-name}

[Karl Berry]

    I suggest that we do it consistently throughout the manual.
    We say something like \@var{some-name} has to be a control sequence
    and begins with a \ in normal circumstances.

I fully agree, FWIW.

(What's irritating to me is that \setcounter (and others?) names do not
use a backslash.)

    Maybe the we should have  some node to define what a control sequence
    is, and say that any catcode 0 character does the job, not only \, 
    [...]
    Node \makeatletter could refer to this node.

I think \makeatletter could refer to plain TeX documentation for catcode
details. Catcodes are not directly relevant to people working in
LaTeX. The current \makeatletter text (written by Jim I think) seems
pretty good at walking this line to me.

    alphabetic control sequence

A phrase that predates my work on the manual.

I don't know about LaTeX, but the terminology in plain TeX is
"control word" for alphabetic, "control symbol" for non-alphabetic,
and "control sequence" generically. I also don't think "control
character" is a good term.

FWIW, striving for perfect consistency of all of these rather deeply
technical issues seems way less important to me than adding new content
for missing commands (of which there are many). --best, karl.