According to this page
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/searchservice/Lucene-query-syntax-in-Azure-Search?redirectedfrom=MSDN#bkmk_syntax
Special characters must be escaped to be used as part of the search text. You can escape them by prefixing them with backslash (\). Special characters that need to be escaped include the following:
+ - && || ! ( ) { } [ ] ^ " ~ * ? : \ /
Is there a built in method, basically the equivalent of UrlEscape, which can do this, or is every developer actually expected to do their own implementation?