Special Characters That Break ATS — What to Avoid on Your Resume

Which Special Characters Break ATS Systems?

The short answer: the characters that most often break ATS parsing are decorative bullets (★, →, ➤), smart quotes, emojis, em dashes, and mathematical symbols (≤, ≥, ½). Replace them with standard bullets (• or -), straight quotes, and spelled-out equivalents. Headers, footers, text boxes, and multi-column tables break parsing just as reliably.

You spent hours making your resume look beautiful — custom bullet points, elegant dividers, that sleek pipe character separating your contact info. Then you applied to 50 jobs and heard nothing.

Here’s what probably happened: the ATS looked at your resume and saw this:

??? ??? ???
John Doe 
Ph?ne: (555) ???-1234
??? Managed team of 10

Your design masterpiece became an unreadable mess. If you want to know whether yours is doing this right now, score your resume now and check the parsing findings.

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Why Special Characters Cause Problems

Applicant Tracking Systems are essentially text parsers. They’re looking for:

• Your name
• Contact information
• Job titles and companies
• Dates of employment
• Skills and keywords

When they encounter a character they don’t recognize, three things can happen:

1. The character disappears — “10+ years” becomes “10 years”
2. The character becomes gibberish — ”→” becomes ”???” or “→”
3. The entire section gets skipped — Your beautifully formatted skills section vanishes

None of these are good.

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The Unsafe Characters List

Decorative Bullet Points (High Risk)

Problematic Punctuation

Character	Risk Level	Alternative
” ” (smart quotes)	Medium	” ” (straight quotes)
’ ’ (smart apostrophes)	Medium	’ (straight apostrophe)
… (ellipsis character)	Low	… (three periods)
– (en dash)	Low	- (hyphen)
— (em dash)	Medium	- or —
	(pipe)	Medium-High

Symbols That Often Break

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Formatting Elements That Cause Issues

It’s not just individual characters. Entire formatting structures can break ATS parsing. The simplest way to avoid all of them at once is to browse ATS-safe templates that never use headers, text boxes, or multi-column tables.

Headers and Footers

Solution: Keep all important information in the main body. Use regular text formatting for your name and contact details.

Text Boxes

Text boxes are essentially invisible containers. ATS often:

• Parse them out of order (your contact info appears at the end)
• Skip them entirely
• Scramble the content with the main text

Solution: Never use text boxes. Format everything as standard text.

Tables

Tables are tricky because:

• Some ATS read left-to-right, ignoring columns
• Some read top-to-bottom within each column
• Some just give up

Solution: If you must use tables for layout, keep them simple. But single-column layouts are always safest.

Multi-Column Layouts

Two-column and three-column resumes look professional, but they’re parsing nightmares.

Solution: Use single-column layouts for ATS-heavy applications. Save the creative layouts for roles where you’re handing the resume directly to a human.

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Safe Formatting: What Works

Font Choices

Safe Bullet Points

The safest options:

• Solid circle: • (U+2022)
• Hyphen: -
• Asterisk: * (though less common)

To insert these in Word or Google Docs:

• Type Alt+7 on Windows for •
• Use the standard bullet list button
• Just type a hyphen and space

Safe Section Dividers

Instead of fancy line graphics:

---                          (three hyphens)
═══════════════════════      (avoid)
••••••••••••••••••••••       (avoid)
________________________     (underscores work)

Simple horizontal rules created with section breaks or three dashes are universally compatible.

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ATS-Safe Character Cheat Sheet (Copy-Paste Reference)

Bookmark this. Every character below is safe to use on any ATS in 2026:

How to Turn Off Smart Quotes (The #1 Hidden Culprit)

Smart quotes (” ” and ’ ’) look nearly identical to straight quotes (” ’ ”) on screen but have different character codes. Many ATS systems convert them to gibberish. Here’s how to disable them:

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How Different ATS Systems Handle Characters

Not all ATS systems are equally strict. Here’s what the major platforms handle well — and what trips them up:

The safest approach is to always use ATS-friendly fonts, proper margins, and the characters from the cheat sheet above. Then use our Keyword Scanner to verify your resume parses correctly against a specific job description. Applying in Europe adds another layer — the European CV format & Europass guide covers what those systems expect.

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The File Format Question

.docx (Word)

PDF

The Verdict

If the job posting specifies a format, use that.

If it doesn’t:

• Apply with .docx for maximum ATS compatibility
• Or use a PDF created from Word/Google Docs (not Canva or InDesign)
• Never submit image-based PDFs (scan test: can you highlight the text?)

Design-first tools are the usual source of image-based exports, so it’s worth a look at how they handle this — compare against Canva before you export from one.

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How to Test Your Resume

Before submitting, test your resume for ATS compatibility — or sidestep the problem and rebuild it in an editor that only emits ATS-safe characters, where bullets, dashes, and quotes are already normalised on export.

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Before and After: Real Examples

Contact Info Section

Before (Risky):

JOHN DOE
📧 john@email.com | 📱 (555) 123-4567 | 📍 New York, NY
linkedin.com/in/johndoe ★ github.com/johndoe

After (ATS-Safe):

JOHN DOE
john@email.com | (555) 123-4567 | New York, NY
linkedin.com/in/johndoe | github.com/johndoe

Skills Section

Before (Risky):

◆ Python ◆ JavaScript ◆ SQL ◆ React
→ Machine Learning → Data Visualization
☑ Agile ☑ Scrum ☑ JIRA

After (ATS-Safe):

Languages: Python, JavaScript, SQL
Frameworks: React, Node.js
Skills: Machine Learning, Data Visualization, Agile, Scrum
Tools: JIRA, GitHub, AWS

Work Experience Bullets

Before (Risky):

➤ Led team of 10+ engineers
➤ Increased revenue by $500K+
➤ Reduced costs by ≈25%

After (ATS-Safe):

• Led team of 10+ engineers
• Increased revenue by over $500K
• Reduced costs by approximately 25%

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Quick Reference Checklist

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Your Move

Your resume can be both professional-looking and ATS-friendly — you don’t have to sacrifice design for compatibility. The key is knowing which elements are safe and which are landmines.

The formatting stack that works everywhere:

• Standard bullets (• or -) and ATS-safe fonts (Calibri, Arial)
• Proper margins and spacing (1-inch, 11pt, 1.15 line spacing)
• Single-column layout with no text boxes
• Straight quotes, hyphens, and standard punctuation
• Strong action verbs and quantified achievements — not symbols — to make your content stand out

Want to check if your current resume passes ATS? Our Keyword Scanner analyses both keyword matching and parsing compatibility. Or use our Bullet Point Generator to create ATS-safe achievement statements from scratch.

For more on what ATS score you need and which keywords to include by industry, see our dedicated guides.

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