diff --git a/Koha/SearchEngine/Elasticsearch/QueryBuilder.pm b/Koha/SearchEngine/Elasticsearch/QueryBuilder.pm
index ac161e50fd..dea84c83a2 100644
--- a/Koha/SearchEngine/Elasticsearch/QueryBuilder.pm
+++ b/Koha/SearchEngine/Elasticsearch/QueryBuilder.pm
@@ -1024,6 +1024,9 @@ sub clean_search_term {
     # screen all brackets with backslash
     $term =~ s/(?<!\\)(?:[\\]{2})*([\{\}\[\]])$lookahead/\\$1/g;
 
+    # remove problematic punctuation and escaped slashes surrounded by spaces if truncate
+    $term =~ s/\s+(\s*[&;,:\.=\-\/]|(\\\/)\s*)+\s$lookahead/ /g if $truncate;
+
     # restore all regex contents after escaping brackets:
     for (my $i = 0; $i < @saved_regexes; $i++) {
         $term =~ s/~~RE$i~~/$saved_regexes[$i]/;