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Special Characters

How to correct for special characters in Workday's UI

Interaction Modes

Editing

Reviewing

Experience Surfaces

Page Body Inline

Delivery Channels

Web

Last Updated

October 2026

Experience Surfaces

Page Body Inline

Delivery Channels

Web

Last Updated

October 2026

Usage Guidance

Special characters can be problematic for screen readers accessing the UI.

Don’t use special characters in fields, check boxes or other UI elements, including (but not limited to) the following characters:

  • Ampersands (&)
  • Slashes (/)
  • Quotation marks ("")
Do
  • San Francisco and other cities
  • Edit/Delete (in a button or CTA)
Don't
  • San Francisco & other cities
  • Choose only 1 primary action for the button: Edit, or Delete

Use Only in Certain Circumstances

You can use the tilde (~) for custom labels or brackets ([ ]) for variables (tokenized items) when you’re writing validation messages.

Tilda (~)

Do
  • Select a remit-from ~sponsor~ that isn't already in use for at least 1 other ~sponsor~.

Brackets ([ ])

Do
  • Use a table for the selected element in this function: [variable].