Strange Characters -Why?

[Matt_H]

In my product descriptions, I sometimes describe the products in terms of inches, using the quote symbol ". Other times, I use the trademark symbol ? . Sometimes I enter in apostrophe/single quotes. However, they sometimes gets messed up, and instead of listing the quote or the trademark, it lists sometimes puts one character (a box) before or after it.

 

I did a dump of the database, and saw that in those places, it has a series of strange characters, such as:

™ or ”

(In case these don't show up, these characters' hex values are c3 a2 e2 80 9e c2 a2 and c3 82 e2 80 9d .)

 

Even when html versions are put in, like & quot; or & trade; initially, these funky kind of characters can still creep in down the line. But it's certainly not consistent. A single description may list the " symbol five times, and one of the five will be corrupt (with a ? next to it), the rest will be fine.

 

So my questions are:

• Why does this happen?
  
• What can I do to prevent it?
  

All help and advice with this is appreciated. Thanks.

[emeraldd]

If it is doing what I think it is, mine does it to. I just go back in and change it to what I want it to be when it happens, then I am fine. I am not sure why it does that thou.

[Matt_H]

Yeah, that's what we have to do, but it keeps happening, and there are enough products with this kind of description, it becomes a big pain to keep updating them.