## Escape characters and encoding

You can escape non-alphanumeric characters in your parameter values, using [URL percent-encoding conventions](🔗).

Values for query parameters that have multiple words can use URL percent-encoded spaces (%20) between the words. For example:

### Escaping characters for fq and efq

Refer to [Faceting and filtering](🔗).

📘

The _br_uid_2 cookie is already encoded

Don't encode the cookie parameter value: _br_uid_2. Use this value exactly as it comes. It's already encoded.

&_br_uid_2=uid%3D7797686432023%3Av%3D11.5%3Ats%3D1428617911187%3Ahc%3D55

## Encoded theme names in thematic page URLs

Here's an example URL: www.example.com/popular/lace-dresses

To send the URL:

1. Fetch the value after /popular/ in the URL. That's your theme name. In the example, it's lace-dresses.

2. Replace the hyphens with spaces, then apply URL percent-encoding.

3. Pass the encoded value in the q parameter as your theme name. In the example, the q parameter value is lace%20dresses.

📘

Encode URL/ref URL

You need to fully encode the url= and ref_url= parameters to prevent breakages on special characters in the URL.

## Encoding quick reference