"When one buys a print on Flickr/Yahoo, the order form calls for "name on credit card." In my case, all the cards I use have "Griffeth A. Wodtke." I then put in all my info -- name, card number, expiration, security code -- and get a message "special characters are not allowed. Please remove them and try again." I couldn't see any special characters, so I redid the credit card number, no luck. Redid the security code, nope, not it. Redid the expiration date, not that either. At that point I concluded it was a glitch and the thing just wasn't going to work, so was about to give up, when it occured to me to delete the middle initial and period. As you of course have known from the beginning, that was it. But is this user friendly? What if the person doesn't know what a "special character" is? I sort of do, but don't really think of a period as a special character, more like # and $ and < and such. And when you ask for the name on the card, you're going to get some with middle initials. Interesting example of designers not thinking it through. Bet they've lost some sales because of that."