Punctuation in titles breaking search - especially "?"

[saseestone]

We've had numerous reports from staff and Jeanette that some titles that contain punctuation are not found in a keyword search if the title contains certain punctuation.

"?" is particularly problematic because it's a wildcard, but also increasingly popular in titles.

Regarding "?", Jennifer noted in Jira issue SW-3840:
Gryphon Search wants searching with the question mark as punctuation to return the string with punctation, AND we want to continue to support wildcard searching in both simple and advanced search. Some suggestions we considered:

• use a different character for the wildcard $ ^ ~ ...
• index the string with the question mark and without
• limit the use of the wildcard to advanced search (doesn't meet our requirement, but possible as a plan B?)
• do something smarter with ? at the end of a word vs embedded in the word (noting that the punctuation might be repeated - e.g. cats???)
• instead of matching 1 and only 1 character, have it match 0 or 1 characters.
• ???
• Profit!

Example records with a question mark in the title:

• At the end: https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/11685342
• Embedded in the title: https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/13417017

"-" also causes issues for this search: https://searchworks.stanford.edu/catalog?utf8=%E2%9C%93&search_field=search&q=R%C3%A9union+%C3%A0+haut+niveau+du+CAD+-+Communiqu%C3%A9+final

"+" too: https://searchworks.stanford.edu/catalog?utf8=%E2%9C%93&search_field=search&q=Tall+buildings+%2B+Urban+habitat

"@[space]" at the beginning of a title: https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/13022698
Note: eliminating the space finds the record, but copy and pasted from a citation would include the space and break the search.