Title: Character encoding problems
Last modified: August 18, 2016

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# Character encoding problems

 *  [thebell](https://wordpress.org/support/users/thebell/)
 * (@thebell)
 * [19 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/character-encoding-problems/)
 * Hi there guys. I’m running a site on [http://www.dependence-guild.com](http://www.dependence-guild.com)
   and I am having some strange problems with some special characters.
 * Every time I try to put a ‘ character, I see it correctly on the database tables
   and on the edit post section of the blog, but when I see the web page, that character
   is rendered as a ? character. I’ve tried changing the encoding of the table in
   mysql from various types (from utf to latin1) bot doesn’t work at all.
 * Could anyone help me with that? Thanks.

Viewing 8 replies - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)

 *  [Doodlebee](https://wordpress.org/support/users/doodlebee/)
 * (@doodlebee)
 * [19 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/character-encoding-problems/#post-523169)
 * Are you writing your posts directly through WordPress, or are you using something
   like Microsoft Word or WordPad (or other rich text editor) to write your posts,
   then copying and pasting them into the WordPress area?
 * Usually that’s the issue when stuff like this happens.
 *  Thread Starter [thebell](https://wordpress.org/support/users/thebell/)
 * (@thebell)
 * [19 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/character-encoding-problems/#post-523172)
 * I’m using the wordpress editor. Actually I can see the character well in the 
   editor of wordpress and in the database through phpmyadmin.
 *  [Doodlebee](https://wordpress.org/support/users/doodlebee/)
 * (@doodlebee)
 * [19 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/character-encoding-problems/#post-523174)
 * Which version of wordpress are you running?
 *  Thread Starter [thebell](https://wordpress.org/support/users/thebell/)
 * (@thebell)
 * [19 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/character-encoding-problems/#post-523181)
 * 2.1
 *  Thread Starter [thebell](https://wordpress.org/support/users/thebell/)
 * (@thebell)
 * [19 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/character-encoding-problems/#post-523183)
 * Actually when looking at the html source code the ‘ symbol ys translated to this:
 * %253F
 * Which is actually the ? symbol.
 * Stalker’s War Bands gets typed as
 * Stalker%253Fs%2BWar%2BBands
 * So it renders as
 * Stalker?s War Bands
 * instead of what should be.
 *  [Doodlebee](https://wordpress.org/support/users/doodlebee/)
 * (@doodlebee)
 * [19 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/character-encoding-problems/#post-523307)
 * If I were to *guess* – I don’t know how right htis would be – but open up your
   wp-includes/default-filters.php file, and just *comment out* (don’t delete) the
   lines that are in the content and comments area that contain “wp_special_characters”–
   see if that helps. (If it doesn’t, you can just uncomment and no damage done.)
 * Oh, when you comment them out and save it, you’ll have to re-save the posts or
   it won’t take. Give it a shot and see what happens (this worked with older versions,
   but I haven’t seen it in 2.1 yet).
 * (and for the record, I’m not seeing this on your site – I see the apostrophes
   just fine.)
 *  [moshu](https://wordpress.org/support/users/moshu/)
 * (@moshu)
 * [19 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/character-encoding-problems/#post-523313)
 * Actually, it seems that all those weird characters come form here:
    [http://www.dependence-guild.com/itemstats/updateitem.php?item=Stalker%253Fs%2BWar%2BBands](http://www.dependence-guild.com/itemstats/updateitem.php?item=Stalker%253Fs%2BWar%2BBands)
   and those are not WP issues.
 *  Thread Starter [thebell](https://wordpress.org/support/users/thebell/)
 * (@thebell)
 * [19 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/character-encoding-problems/#post-523403)
 * OK, could be a problem with that plugin. Thanks for pointing to the right direction,
   I’ll give it a look when I have time and let you know.
 * Thanks!

Viewing 8 replies - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)

The topic ‘Character encoding problems’ is closed to new replies.

 * In: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/)
 * 8 replies
 * 3 participants
 * Last reply from: [thebell](https://wordpress.org/support/users/thebell/)
 * Last activity: [19 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/character-encoding-problems/#post-523403)
 * Status: not resolved

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