Embase Online Help

Many drug and chemical names names have non-alphanumeric characters such as apostrophes ( ' ), parentheses ( ), square brackets [ ], hyphens (-), periods (.) and commas (,).

Example:  1 (1,4 benzodioxan 5 yl) 4 [2 (1 indanyl)ethyl]piperazine

Use the keyboard characters listed below to search these compounds: 

Non-alphanumeric character

Keyboard character

Apostrophe ( ' )

Grave accent ( ` )

Parentheses ( )

Parentheses ( )

Square brackets [ ]

Parentheses ( )

Hyphen (-)

Hyphen (-) or space

Period (.)

Period (.) or space

Comma (,)

Comma (,) or space

Colon (:)

(Not used in Emtree)

Important:  Drug/chemical names with special characters must be enclosed in quotes.

Example:   “1 (1,4 benzodioxan 5 yl) 4 (2 (1 indanyl)ethyl)piperazine”

Note:  Square brackets [ ], quotes ( ' ) and colons (:) cannot be used in phrase searches since they are characters reserved for special functions in Embase search syntax.