To avoid using reserved words and screwing up your code, just decide on a naming scheme for your variables. I've put "my" in front of my example variable, but you'll probably want to come up with ...

Both Dynamic Text components and Custom Display Lists use variables to return properties without formatting (HTML markup). Creating List Templates with Variables When creating a list template, any ...

To get around the clutter, most developers have switched to using preprocessors like SASS or LESS which support creating variables by converting them when the processor is run over your code.