Single quotes and double quotes showing as ? on web page

[jwhite68]

I have an issue with quotes showing as question marks on my webpage. I am sure its a UTF-8 related issue, but some of the facts surrounding the issue confuse me.

 

The database is MySQL and stores the text as UTF-8.

The PHP script simply takes the data from the database to a string:

 

$desc = $info['description'];

 

And the text itself, is in a HTML string in the database as:

 

<P class=MsoNormal style=MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt>The Golfers will enjoy their favorite sport on the Golf course only 5 min drive from “The Vineyards”.</P>

 

I am pretty sure that the original source was MS Word, and that the double quotes, in this example, are the special quotes from Word and not the ASCII quotes.

 

When the webpage displays, it displays with the Unicode encoding.

 

So, database is UTF-8, assignment in PHP is simple assignment without any form of stripping, tag removal etc.  And encoding on webpage is Unicode.  So can anyone suggest why they arent being displayed?

 

In the above example, the latter part of the text shows as ?The Vineyards?

It seems to apply to double quotes for sure, but also to some single quotes, as I have other text that displays as it?s instead of it's.

[jwhite68]

Another piece of information.

 

The data that was initially put into the 'description' field was read in from an Excel file, which in turn was output from another MySQL database export - where that database was in Latin1 encoding.

[effigy]

Those are smart quotes. Search the forums for "smart quotes" for various approaches.

[jwhite68]

I can search for smart quotes, but its also doing this for a hyphen symbol to, and perhaps others that I havent found yet.

[effigy]

Are you sure it's a hyphen? It could be an en-dash. This post has some ideas. I still think there should be a way to convert from Windows-1252...

[jwhite68]

It could be an en-dash.  As I said, I am pretty sure the source was a Word document initially - but I dont have access to the source to check this.

 

I did try following the post you suggested, but unfortunately its not resulted in any changes/improvements.

[jwhite68]

I did find something in the recommended post.

 

By putting the code:

 

$body = ereg_replace(128, '', $body); // Euro symbol
$body = ereg_replace(133, '...', $body); // ellipses
$body = ereg_replace(8226, '', $body); // double prime
$body = ereg_replace(8216, "'", $body); // left single quote
$body = ereg_replace(145, "'", $body); // left single quote
$body = ereg_replace(8217, "'", $body); // right single quote
$body = ereg_replace(146, "'", $body); // right single quote
$body = ereg_replace(8220, '"', $body); // left double quote
$body = ereg_replace(147, '"', $body); // left double quote
$body = ereg_replace(8221, '"', $body); // right double quote
$body = ereg_replace(148, '"', $body); // right double quote
$body = ereg_replace(8226, "*", $body); // bullet
$body = ereg_replace(149, "*", $body); // bullet
$body = ereg_replace(8211, "-", $body); // en dash
$body = ereg_replace(150, "-", $body); // en dash
$body = ereg_replace(8212, "-", $body); // em dash
$body = ereg_replace(151, "-", $body); // em dash
$body = ereg_replace(8482, '', $body); // trademark
$body = ereg_replace(153, '', $body); // trademark
$body = ereg_replace(169, '', $body); // copyright mark
$body = ereg_replace(174, '', $body); // registration mark

 

in a function, and invoking it to convert any description strring before being output has helped. Its resolved the hyphen, single and double quotes.  But I now see an issue with a bullet point symbol thats showing as a question mark.  Does anyone have a more comprehensive function, like the one above, that covers all situations?