Heads up! This is going to be a little messy because the nature of figuring out the best way to encompass all serial patterns without losing information is apparently pretty hard! I have two different notation styles that I use depending on how much ability I have to put down complex information in a given moment.
I originally used a very simplified format when I wasn't sure if certain serial patterns were notable or not. I have adapted this slightly to fit my current knowledge and use this when I need to type quickly or don't have time for things like long presses. I will try to be consistent in my use of this format on the website, but it can be played pretty fast and loose.
Examples: (this is kind of hard without using images, but I'm not figuring that out right now...)
This was designed for me to be able to perform complex and specific searches on a database, so it's less readable at-a-glance, but it's very consistent and accurate to a much wider range of serial formats.
| Symbol | Symbol Description | Purpose | Equivalent RegEx |
|---|---|---|---|
| a | lowercase a | any alphabet character A...Z | [A-Z] |
| # | number symbol | any digit 0...9 | \d |
| A...Z | a singular capital letter | a specific alphabet character | the actual letter |
| 0...9 | a singular number | a specific number | the actual number |
| ? | question mark | any alphanumeric character | [A-Z0-9] |
| - | dash | any separator character. due to the unavailability of or difficulty of access of many of these characters in unicode, this is accompanied by a separate text description of the separator (dash, square, state, etc.) | |
| space | a gap between characters, typically only between characters of a similar style except when a gap is especially notable | \s | |
| [?/?] | square brackets around any symbols used in this format, separated by forward slashes | stacked characters. for multiple rows, add additional slashes. this is taken from Wikipedia | |
| [?] | square brackets around typically one character symbol, typically alphabet characters | a character that is smaller than the standard plate character size | |
| [TEXT] | uppercase text in square brackets | small text. spaces are used between words if there are multiple, and stacking of words is not accounted for | |
| [Descriptor] | a capitalized word in square brackets | a non-separator special character, typically [Wheelchair] | |
| ["Descriptor"] | a capitalized word in quotes and square brackets | a variant of the separator character symbol, when it is otherwise not practical to include separate information about the shape of the symbol | |
| @, &, etc. | special keyboard characters | when permitted by states, sometimes easily accessible keyboard characters can be present on a plate. typically these are on personalized plates, but can be present on serials. these can be used directly in the notation when it makes sense to do so |
Whenever I get around to being able to do plate images, I will provide plate images with examples! :)