How to fix so special characters don't show up as strange unreadable code
In user forum posts, all special characters like apostrophes and ampersands show up as strange code, "... don't know if that's ...", for example. I have noticed this on several websites and it is not doing this on other web browsers such as Internet Explorer. Is there some way to change the settings in Firefox so not to do this?
Athraithe ag cor-el ar
All Replies (2)
Because forums feature user input pasted from various systems, there will always be a little room for oddities. But, on the whole, most text will conform to either of two encoding standards: Unicode (utf-8) or ISO-8859-1.
To change a page you're viewing, try switching between those using:
Alt+v (opens the classic View menu) > Character Encoding
To set your default, use:
orange Firefox button or classic Tools menu > Options > Content
In the "Fonts & Colors" section click the Advanced button. Then check the drop-down toward the bottom in the Character Encoding section.
There also can be issues with certain fonts that do not have a complete character set. If you post a few URLs where there is a persistent problem, we could help with font-related troubleshooting.
You seem to be seeing HTML entity code instead of the entities: 'instead of the single quote '
Sometimes such code is part to the page code and the result of pasting text.
Can you post a link to a page where you see this so we can check it?