diff --git a/doc/user.tex b/doc/user.tex
index f9e0e27e7..b52163699 100644
--- a/doc/user.tex
+++ b/doc/user.tex
@@ -216,7 +216,8 @@ the negative and positive directions of each dimension). \\\\
 \begin{routine} {void ops\_decl\_const(char const * name, int dim, char const * type, T * data )}
 {This routine defines a global constant: a variable in global scope. Global constants need to be declared upfront
  so that they can be correctly handled for different parallelizations. For e.g CUDA on GPUs. Once defined
- they remain unchanged throughout the program, unless changed by a call to ops\_update\_const(..) }
+ they remain unchanged throughout the program, unless changed by a call to ops\_update\_const(..). The ``name'' and ``type''
+ parameters \emph{must} be string literals since they are used in the code generation step }
 
 \item[name]          a name used to identify the constant
 \item[dim]           dimension of dataset (number of items per element)
diff --git a/ops_translator/c/ops.py b/ops_translator/c/ops.py
index df4a3a962..acdfcdb4d 100755
--- a/ops_translator/c/ops.py
+++ b/ops_translator/c/ops.py
@@ -220,6 +220,14 @@ def ops_decl_const_parse(text, macro_defs):
       return
     args[1] = evaluate_macro_defs_in_string(macro_defs, args[1])
 
+    if args[0].count('"') != 2:
+      print('Error in ops_decl_const : name must be a string literal')
+      return
+
+    if args[2].count('"') != 2:
+      print('Error in ops_decl_const : type must be a string literal')
+      return
+
     consts.append({
           'loc': m.start(),
           'name': args[0].strip(),