Quote:
Originally Posted by soinkster
why on certain websites i get these symbols instead of quotation marks or commas? it makes for a tough read sometimes, thanks
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A simple explanation is that there are different character set encodings in use out there. As you probably know, the letter A isn't really an A to a computer, it's a binary number. The computer knows to convert that binary number to the letter A. Other binary numbers convert to other letters, numbers, and symbols.
How these binary numbers get converted into stuff you can read is called a character set encoding. The most popular one is called ASCII, but it is very limited on the types of characters it can display. There are many other encodings used. In order to see the proper character in the document you are reading the same (or a compatible) character set encoding must be used by the document creator and the program used to read that document.
If you see strange symbols, one of the follow has happened: 1) Your web browser or operating system doesn't support that encoding. 2) The web site said it used one encoding but it really used a different encoding. 3) It didn't say which encoding it was using and your web browser assumed a different encoding. 4) The web page used a non-standard encoding (like a special font you don't have).
This error is pretty common when using word processors to edit web documents.