Punctuation, diacritics, and special characters
In general, do not enter punctuation such as , . ; and symbols such as $ % when you search.
Note: Characters such as * ? # have special meaning as truncation and wildcard characters.
OCLC holdings symbols often contain special characters. Do not remove these characters when searching in an index such as "library" or when entering symbols for a limit.
Punctuation and diacritics
Accents and diacritics
Omit accent marks and diacritics (such as an cedilla or umlaut) and other punctuation marks when entering a search string.
| to search for: | enter: |
|---|---|
| façade | kw:facade |
| gebäck | kw:geback |
Apostrophe
Apostrophes are both:
- Deleted and collapsed
- Converted to a space
French word l'information can be searched as linformation or information. See additional examples below.
| to search for: | enter: |
|---|---|
| french word l'information | kw:linformation or kw:information |
| author name O'Hara | au:ohara or au:o hara |
| Ch'ing porcelain | kw:ching porcelain or kw:ch ing porcelain |
Special characters
Romanization
Some special characters are replaced by a romanized form of the character:
| to search for: | enter: |
|---|---|
| hooked u | u |
| Eszett | ss |
Slash
Enter a space in place of a / (slash).
| to search for: | enter: |
|---|---|
| brother/sister | kw:brother sister or, more specifically, kw:brother w sister |
Exceptions
Ampersands and hyphens can be included in a search.
| character | mark | rule |
|---|---|---|
| Ampersand | & | Retained in search |
| Asterisk | * | Substitute a space |
| At sign | @ | Substitute a space |
| Apostrophe | ' | Indexed as both omit and close space and substitute a space. See Apostrophe. |
| Backslash | \ | Substitute a space |
| Brackets | [ ] | Omit and close space |
| Bracketed information | [nnn] | Include in searches except for:
|
| Colon | : | Substitute a space |
| Comma | , | Substitute a space |
| Copyright | © | Omit and close space |
| Curly brackets | { } | Substitute a space |
| Degree | ° | Omit and close space |
| Dollar | $ | Substitute a space |
| Equal | = | Substitute a space |
| Euro | € | Substitute a space |
| Exclamation point | ! | Substitute a space |
| Flat (musical) | Substitute a space | |
| Greater than | > | Substitute a space |
| Hyphen/Minus | - | Substitute a space. However, if retained in a search it is automatically converted to a proximity search. |
| Inverted exclamation point | ¡ | Substitute a space |
| Inverted question mark | ¿ | Substitute a space |
| Less than | < | Substitute a space |
| Number sign | # | Omit and close space |
| Parentheses | ( ) | Omit and close space unless entering a Boolean search |
| Percent | % | Substitute a space |
| Period/Decimal point | . | Substitute a space except enter as the first period in a class number search. |
| Phonogram copyright |  |
Omit and close space |
| Plus | + | Substitute a space |
| Plus/minus | ± | Substitute a space |
| Question mark | ? | Substitute a space |
| Quotation marks (single or double) |
' " |
Substitute a space unless enclosing multiple words in a word search to retrieve the exact sequence. |
| Semicolon | ; | Substitute a space |
| Slash | / | Substitute a space unless entering a Dewey class search; then omit and close space. |
| Space | Reduce multiple adjacent spaces to a single space and omit all leading and trailing spaces. | |
| Underscore (spacing or non-spacing) | _ | Omit and close space |