Users are not programmers, Amazon expects pipe character for user input

There isn't much wrong telling users to separate search terms with the | character as such; what is laughable is the (pipe) remark after it. Users will be scratching their heads at why the word pipe appears in parentheses after |, which doesn't look anything like a pipe.

Users can learn to use funny characters. By now, "everyone" knows that # is called hash, thanks to Twitter. It just has to be set up properly.

"Dear user. The | character is called 'pipe' in geek culture, due to a certain historic use[learn more link]. We think it looks nice when you use it for separating pieces of text. In this search box, you can enter multiple terms separated by this pipe character. The software will search for matches for all those terms simultaneously as if they were independent searches, and give you the combined results."