random equal signs.....

[bbango]

Hey everyone,

I have an application form with text inputs and 3 text areas that people are filling out. A problem I'm having is people are typing the application up in Microsoft word and copying and pasting the information into the textareas. So with word's smart quotes and other special characters I'm getting some weird characters as an output (the application is emailed to me once submitted).

So i fixed the " and ' quotes using str_replace - not a problem. but I am getting random = signs replacing letters in the text. I think this is very strange and have never seen this before. here is an example:

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In recent years the art form known as “jazz” has been influenced by a n=mber of contemporary artists that have changed the jazz landscape by fusin= contemporary music to traditional jazz. The project’s objective is to broaden the appeal of jazz as a musical fo=mat
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Ok so that is a little snippet of a paragraph. If i paste this same couple sentences into each of the 3 different textareas, the same characters are being replaced each time. But it does not happen with every instance of a letter (ex: influenced by a n=mber - 2 u's one is regular and the other has been changed to an = sign).

So, has anyone ever come accross this or seen this before?? Please help!

Thanks, brandon