When a symbol is specified as an actual argument, the name of the symbol, not the numeric value of the symbol, is passed to the macro. You can pass the value of the symbol by inserting a backslash (\) before the symbol in the macro call. The assembler passes the characters representing the decimal value of the symbol to the macro. For example, if the symbol COUNT has a value of 2 and the actual argument specified is \COUNT, the assembler passes the string 2 to the macro; it does not pass the name of the symbol, COUNT. Passing numeric values of symbols is especially useful with the apostrophe (') concatenation operator for creating new symbols. An example of a macro definition for passing numeric values of symbols follows: .MACRO WORD n WORD'n: .WORD n .ENDM WORD The following example shows a possible call and expansion of the macro previously defined: X = 1 ; Start counting at 1 WORD \X WORD1: .WORD 1