MASM is unusual for an assembly language in that is has types. MASM knows because of how you defined the symbol item that is a memory location of type DWORD. When you use it as an operand knows that you (probably) mean that you want the value stored at the address, not the value of the address. So it doesn’t matter if you use item or [item] MASM assumes you mean the later. If you really want the address of item instead you need to use OFFSET item.
On the other hand if you had defined item as constant using item = 42 then mov ebx, item would load the immediate value. Because of this ambiguity, you need to know how item was defined to determine if it’s an immediate operand or a memory operand, it’s good idea to avoid using a bare symbol as an operand.
I should add that the square brackets [] mean pretty much nothing to MASM when you’re just using symbols or numbers. They only mean something when you use them with registers. Here’s some examples:
item DD 42
const = 43
mov eax, item ; memory operand (the value stored at item)
mov eax, [item] ; memory operand
mov eax, OFFSET item ; immediate operand (the address of item)
mov eax, [OFFSET item] ; immediate operand
mov eax, const ; immediate operand (43)
mov eax, [const] ; immediate operand
mov eax, ds:[const] ; memory operand (the value at address 43)
mov eax, fs:30h ; memory operand (the value at address 30h + fs base)
mov eax, OFFSET const ; immediate operand
mov eax, [OFFSET const] ; immediate operand
mov eax, 42 ; immediate operand
mov eax, ebx ; register operand (the value of EBX)
mov eax, [ebx] ; indirect operand (the value pointed to by EBX)
So without registers square brackets only show your intent. You should put square brackets around symbols if you intend to use them as memory operands, and use OFFSET with symbols you intend to use as immediate values.