Usually, primitive type variables do not need to be initialized. However, you could set it to some default value (' ', for example) or (since it has a numeric value) you could set it to zero.

char grde=''; when i put it like this I am getting a syntax error but when I put a letter either A or B or may C the syntax is gone but i dont want it like that . I want it to accept any letter grade. how do i do that

I did not have nothing between the single quotes -- I had a space character in there. I thought that maybe you could use that as an unassigned grade character.