That's why if we use% *: with numbers when giving strong passwords, it will take a long time for them to hack their passwords.
Not really. If someone is going to bruteforce your password, then they will likely already being using the full ASCII character set. There's a lot more to a truly secure password than just throwing in a percentage sign somewhere.
i don't think we can generalize this because it will come down to how the password is actually created. for example if it is simply a couple of obvious words with one or two symbols thrown in there then it could be broken rather easily. but technically adding symbols to the mix is increasing the search space.
if the password consists of only letters:
- no case sensitivity -> each position is only 26 possibilities
- with case sensitivity -> it goes up to 52
- with symbols -> it jumps to 90