← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Faust
Thread ID: 1346 | Posts: 5 | Started: 2002-06-19
2002-06-19 18:16 | User Profile
' and " keep turning into ? when I post articles. Why?
2002-06-20 07:00 | User Profile
I don't know, Faust. I do notice that it seems to be a problem that primarily affects your posts, though. To be honest, I don't know what the solution is. Are you simply cutting and pasting text and do the question marks show up when you preview your posts?
2003-01-26 03:54 | User Profile
If you're doing your writing in a word processor (like, I use WordPerfect), when you cut and paste BACK into this "program" some word processor coding comes too. I have to remember to delete the first 'character' here.
My html editor (HotDog) always adds the question mark to text I copy over from WordPerfect... But it's also usually not visible in HotDog unless it's inside certain html codings... So I have to either remember to delete the first (invisible) character, or, when I see it in the Browser go back and delete it...
2003-01-26 23:07 | User Profile
Avalanche,
There is no problem with the stuff I write. The problem happens when I "copy" articles from websites and them "paste" them into netscape or notepad.
2003-01-26 23:35 | User Profile
annalex investigated this problem on [url=http://www.libertyforum.org/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=common_law&Number=247050&view=&what=showflat&sb=&o=&vc=1&t=-1#Post310486]LibertyForum[/url]. Here's his conclusion:
Now I am viewing my post in the Linux environment.
I see MS Explorer-generated text appear normal: the quotes look like straight quotes and the apostrophe as a straight apostrophe
I see MS-Word with the smart quote option turned on screwed up. The smart quotes became question marks, and so did the apostrophe.
MS-Word wihtout the smart quotes appear normal.
Now I will quote that post using Linux copy and paste:
Typing in MS Explorer: "don't do that".
Pasting from MS Word using smart quotes: ?Don?t do that?
My bet is that event when viewed from a MS Explorer, the question marks remain question marks. That is they are question marks in the Linux environment: the server sent smart quotes but the Netscape browser converted them to question marks for good.
MS Word's "smart quotes" are characters that look like double quotes but have different shape for opening and closing quote. There is also a special character for apostrophe, distinct from the accent sign. None of these smart characters appear on the keyboard. MS Word quietly substitutes them. But in the heterogeneous WWW environment a Linus (or other non-Windows) user may receive a "smart" character and not know what to do with it. Linux replaces them with "?".