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Special characters

Acorn supports 256 characters in its full bibliographic record. However, not all computers can display all 256 characters.

Transliterated Characters

The following table contains transliterated characters as well as the replacement characters to use when searching a term containing a transliterated character.

Character Name Replacement Character
Polish L

L, l

Scandinavian O O, o
Icelandic thorn B, b
D with crossbar

D, d

digraph AE AE, ae
ligature OE OE, oe
O hook O, o
U hook U, u
musical flat b

 

 

 

 

 

 

Punctuation

When marks of punctuation are included in a search expression, Acorn either replaces the punctuation marks with spaces, or searches variations of the search expression containing the punctuation, or ignores the punctuation marks. To search a punctuation mark as a literal character, enclose the expression in double quotation marks.

Acorn searches periods (.) based on how this punctuation mark displays in the search expression. If the period does not mark the end of a sentence or if the period is not used as a decimal mark within a numeral, the period is replaced with spaces. If the period is used as a decimal mark, it is not replaced with a space. For example, the title Vacationland U.S.A. will be searched as VACATIONLAND U S A.

Acorn also replaces commas (,) within a search expression with a space. For example, the title Goodbye, Columbus, and Five Short Stories will be searched as GOODBYE COLUMBUS FIVE SHORT STORIES.

Search expressions containing hyphens (-) are searched with the hyphen included. A search without the hyphen displays words both with and without the hyphen. For example, the title Camp-fire Girls will be searched as CAMP-FIRE GIRLS. Only titles that include a hyphen between Camp and Fire will display. To broaden the search to include the phrase "Camp Fire" with and without the hyphen, use CAMP FIRE GIRLS.

Acorn ignores the circumflex (^) in search expressions.

The following table contains additional special characters. Some of these characters are replaced by a space; some are ignored:

Punctuation Name Replaced With
accent `

space

ampersand & ignored
apostrophe, single quotation mark ' ignored
asterisk *

space

at sign (each) @ space
back slash \ ignored
brackets [ ] spaces
colon : space
exclamation point ! space
forward slash / space
number sign, pound sign, musical sharp # space
percent sign % space
plus + space
semicolon ; space
tilde ~ space
underscore _ space