# Why am I seeing "Error in liquid syntax"?

> How to fix the TokenizationError caused by special characters like parentheses, slashes, or colons inside personalization tokens.

## What This Error Means

SecureMailMerge uses the [Liquid template language](https://liquidjs.com/) to process your personalization tokens. Liquid treats everything inside curly braces (e.g. \{\{...\}\}) as code, not plain text. When a column name contains special characters, Liquid tries to interpret them as programming operators and fails.

For example, if your spreadsheet has a column called **Date(s)** and you type `{{Date(s)}}` into your email, Liquid sees:

- `Date`, a variable name
- `(s)`, what looks like a function call or range expression

This triggers the error:

> TokenizationError: invalid range syntax

## Characters That Cause This Error

The following characters have special meaning in Liquid and will cause errors when used inside curly braces:

| Character | What Liquid thinks it means |
|-----------|---------------------------|
| `(` `)` | Range expression or grouping |
| `/` | Division operator |
| `:` | Filter argument separator |
| `+` `-` `*` | Arithmetic operators |

So a column named `Date(s)` or `Day(s)/Date(s):` will break because Liquid tries to parse these characters as code.

## How to Fix It

### Option 1: Use the column dropdown (recommended)

The easiest fix is to use the **personalization token dropdown** in SecureMailMerge instead of typing the token manually. The dropdown automatically wraps column names that contain special characters in the correct escape syntax:

`{{ ["Date(s)"] }}`

The square brackets and quotes tell Liquid to treat the entire string as a column name rather than code. Simply select the column from the dropdown and click the button to insert it into your subject or body.

### Option 2: Fix the syntax manually

If you prefer to type tokens yourself, wrap column names that contain special characters in `["..."]`:

| Wrong | Correct |
|-------|---------|
| `{{Date(s)}}` | `{{ ["Date(s)"] }}` |
| `{{Day(s)/Date(s):}}` | `{{ ["Day(s)/Date(s):"] }}` |
| `{{Time(s):}}` | `{{ ["Time(s):"] }}` |

### Option 3: Rename your spreadsheet columns

You can avoid this issue entirely by renaming your columns to use only letters, numbers, and underscores:

| Before | After |
|--------|-------|
| `Date(s)` | `Dates` |
| `Day(s)/Date(s):` | `Day_Dates` |
| `Time(s):` | `Times` |

After renaming, simple tokens like `{{Dates}}` will work without any special syntax.

## Related

- [Why am I seeing "ParseError: unexpected token"?](https://www.securemailmerge.com/help/error-parse-error/)
- [Creating your mail merge template](https://www.securemailmerge.com/help/creating-a-mail-merge-template/)
- [Why does my spreadsheet show an "illegal characters" error?](https://www.securemailmerge.com/help/illegal-characters-in-column-headers/)