# When I put "-" in a field it is causing a series of random lettering in the output of the csv file

**URL:** <https://community.parabola.io/t/when-i-put-in-a-field-it-is-causing-a-series-of-random-lettering-in-the-output-of-the-csv-file/3042>\
**Category:** Ask a question\
**Tags:** Building-Flows\
**Created:** [October 24, 2024, 10:22pm UTC](https://community.parabola.io/t/when-i-put-in-a-field-it-is-causing-a-series-of-random-lettering-in-the-output-of-the-csv-file/3042 "2024-10-24T22:22:41Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Jailynn\_Robinson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/848f3c/32.png) [@Jailynn\_Robinson](https://community.parabola.io/u/Jailynn_Robinson)\
**Post date:** [October 24, 2024, 10:22pm UTC](https://community.parabola.io/t/when-i-put-in-a-field-it-is-causing-a-series-of-random-lettering-in-the-output-of-the-csv-file/3042/1 "2024-10-24T22:22:41Z")

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Hello,

In my input file I have “Determ. Sys. **–** Cost of In-house Activities” in the output csv received from Parabola it spits out “Determ. Sys. **â€** “ Cost of In-house Activities”. What can I do to avoid this from occurring it does not look great.

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**Author:** ![Cat\_Tang](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/35a633/32.png) [@Cat\_Tang](https://community.parabola.io/u/Cat_Tang)\
**Post date:** [January 7, 2025, 10:39pm UTC](https://community.parabola.io/t/when-i-put-in-a-field-it-is-causing-a-series-of-random-lettering-in-the-output-of-the-csv-file/3042/2 "2025-01-07T22:39:43Z")

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Hi Jailynn,

Thanks for writing in! This is likely occurring because the hyphen is recognized as a special character. You can work around this by either using a “find and replace” step to try and replace the hyphen, a clean with JSON option under the “clean data” step, or use the regex step.

Feel free to ping [help@parabola.io](mailto:help@parabola.io) if you’d like us to take a look at your data specifically.

All the best,  
Cat