In my web application, we want to allow users to provide custom text for
simple automated messages, in which they can provide variables that will be
filled in automatically. To give an example in English, it might look like
this:

  * Possible variables in English: @pet @groomer @time @owner
  * User provides this text: "Hi @owner, please confirm your grooming appointment for @pet with @groomer at @time."
  * An example auto-generated message: "Hi Rebecca, please confirm your grooming appointment for Fido with Melissa at 3:30pm."

Because we want this to be user-friendly across languages, I would like to
know what kind of fill-in-the-blank variable setup would be somewhat familiar
and easy to use in Japanese. Is there some common pattern or symbol that would
be the equivalent of the "@" symbol I used in my example?

EDIT: We would ideally like to localize all parts of the text. It might look
something like this (minus my mistakes, of course):

  * Possible variables in Japanese: ＠（名前） ＠（ペット） ＠（時間）＠（所有者）
  * User provides this text: こんにちは、＠（名前）さん、＠（時間）に＠（ペット）の予約を確認してください。
  * An example auto-generated message: こんにちは、北本さん、16:00にポチの予約を確認してください。

The idea is that the user would find it easy to type in any message they want,
and they can optionally put in placeholders for variable information like
names, times, dates, etc. This feature is intended for users who are not
necessarily technically savvy. I was hoping there are existing apps in Japan
that do this kind of thing already.
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internet-slang quotes symbols email computing
How to provide variable text in Japanese?
Most symbols used in the English language would work. If you just give
instructions like "this '@' always indicates a variable" somewhere, I'm sure
people will understand whether it's '@' or '%', and you (or your programmer)
can accommodate that. You can choose whatever symbol convenient for you. It's
probably wise to stick to symbols on the [JIS keyboard
layout](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/JIS%E3%82%AD%E3%83%BC%E3%83%9C%E3%83%BC%E3%83%89),
and you might have to be prepared to accept [fullwidth
forms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halfwidth_and_fullwidth_forms) not just
halfwidth forms, though. And because Japanese lacks word dividers, you might
want to use symbols (like brackets, or %variable% as Windows batch files do)
to indicate the end of a variable name as well as the beginning.

In general, you can probably use a standard localization solution used in the
programming language/framework you use without any change, as long as it's a
popular one like Android and Java. I haven't encountered a problem specific to
Japanese in that way.
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answer