You can keep C syntax in your head.

But that's the problem with C. It looks like a simple language with a small number of straightforward constructs, when in fact it has very poor predictability.

Real-world results are implementation and platform-dependent, which is a polite way of saying they're unhelpfully unpredictable.

Coding standards will help, but they only get you so far because some ambiguities will always be there.

Basically C is a half-assed wrapper around assembler - useful in its day, but machine-dependent and outdated now.