i'm using the following regular expression to form a basic email validation. var emailRegEx = /^([a-zA-Z0-9])(([a-zA-Z0-9])*([\._\+-])*([a-zA-Z0-9]))*@(([a-zA-Z0-9\-])+(\.))+([a-zA-Z]{2,4})+$/; this works pretty well for what i need but i also need to exclude these specific characters for reasons i won't go into. !,#,$,%,^,&,*,(,),-,+,|,{,},[,],:,>,<,?,/,\,= - (the characters between the "," if that isn't clear) could someone help me with adding the second group to the first? I know the pro's and cons of using javascript to validate email addresses - i have to do it this way. thanks.