Explicitly specifies the properties of data objects or functions.

  Type declarations must precede all executable statements, can be
  declared only once, and cannot be used to change the type of a
  symbolic name that has already been implicitly assumed to be
  another type.

  Type declaration statements can initialize data in the same way as
  the DATA statement:  by having values, bounded by slashes, listed
  immediately after the symbolic name of the entity.