Unusual character sequences found in email

I'm using Windows XP Pro, and Yahoo Mail.
Occasionally, some email messages contain some unusual characters
that consist of 3-letter sequences starting with some characters
that resemble the letters "a" and "E" (but aren't) followed by
a third character. Here are some examples ...

publishing’s

Contract â€" A Primer

a “love song� to


What causes this?

Is someone using a keyboard from a different system (e.g., a Mac)
that's generating these characters?

Or is it caused by improperly importing a word-processing document
into plain text?

Is there something I can do on my part to correct these sequences?

I get those to sometimes.

That can happen when someone composes the message in Word with Smart Quotes enabled, then
does a copy/paste into their mail program.

With Smart quotes, when someone types ' or " or - in Word, it converts them to extended
characters that have the quotes lean in or out on an angle rather than straight down or a
special dash. It's supposed to look fancier, but those characters don't paste into
standard text well.

The samples you had probably were intended to be:

publishing's

Contract - A Primer

a "love song" to

Not much you can do on your end other than talk to the sender.

--

Mike - http://pages.prodigy.net/michael_santovec/techhelp.htm


"wylbur37" wrote in message

I'm using Windows XP Pro, and Yahoo Mail.
Occasionally, some email messages contain some unusual characters
that consist of 3-letter sequences starting with some characters
that resemble the letters "a" and "E" (but aren't) followed by
a third character. Here are some examples ...

publishingâ?Ts

Contract â?" A Primer

a â?olove songâ?� to


What causes this?

Is someone using a keyboard from a different system (e.g., a Mac)
that's generating these characters?

Or is it caused by improperly importing a word-processing document
into plain text?

Is there something I can do on my part to correct these sequences?