[support] pathauto replacing question mark & equal to sign in the desired url with %3D etc.

Hi, For a particular taxonomy vocabulary, I am setting up a url alias as: myuniquepath/spath?tag=[term-name] e.g. myuniquepath/spath?tag=newbie The url shown in the alias list is fine and shows as above but when being rendered on nodes/teasers, i see %3F & %3D in the url : myuniquepath/spath%3Ftag%3Fnewbie Any way to avoid/overcome this? I also have set the punctuation settings in pathauto for '?' & '=' to no action. - Ben