cavka

No luck. It’s still giving me the full title (I have a title with both en and em dash and tried & #8211; with and without &, # and ; ans also for 8212). Just in case, this is the rest of the relevant code:

add_action('save_post', 'mytheme_save_data');
// Save data from meta box
function mytheme_save_data($post_id) {
    global $meta_box;
    // verify nonce
    if (!wp_verify_nonce($_POST['mytheme_meta_box_nonce'], basename(__FILE__))) {
        return $post_id;
    }
    // check autosave
    if (defined('DOING_AUTOSAVE') && DOING_AUTOSAVE) {
        return $post_id;
    }
    // check permissions
    if ('page' == $_POST['post_type']) {
        if (!current_user_can('edit_page', $post_id)) {
            return $post_id;
        }
    } elseif (!current_user_can('edit_post', $post_id)) {
        return $post_id;
    }
    foreach ($meta_box['fields'] as $field) {
        $old = get_post_meta($post_id, $field['id'], true);
        $new = $_POST[$field['id']];
        if ($new && $new != $old) {
            update_post_meta($post_id, $field['id'], $new);
        } elseif ('' == $new) {
	    update_post_meta($post_id, $field['id'], get_the_title( $post_id ));
        }
    }
}