Kindle for PC search by character

I'm not sure how kindle for PC does the search function, but it seems to create an index of terms that are words. This system makes searching for characters not possible. This wouldn't be an issue except that in books were words are cut at the end of a line and then continued on the next line, the search function does NOT return a word; instead you'd have to search for the separated word as two words. Similarly frustrating is a word that is immediately followed by a em dash; the search function will not return any instances of a word that I search that doesn't have a space after it, unless I add the dash to account for it (then in that case, all instances where there isn't a dash are excluded)