In FrameMaker, when you want to use a “special character” in a dialog box, you create that character with a sequence of a backslash followed by a character. For example, to create an emdash, you’d use “\m”.
If you have a special character like this in your variable definition, you’ll need to enter this character sequence in the BookVars file using the internal editor. When you enter the character sequence using the internal editor, then save, close, and reopen the file, you’ll see that the character sequence has turned into the actual special character.
If you’re working with multiple BookVars files and using an external editor to edit the INI files, you’ll need to copy and paste the character from the file that was created using the procedure described above. Depending on the version of FrameMaker you’re using, this character might not look like the character you expect (in the external editor), but it should work properly.