Sort out the 8217 problem

J_B

J_B wrote: »

Sorry - can you say that again in English


One of the few times it has happened to me ...
I copied some text from somewhere (can't remember where, sorry) and pasted it into the 'reply' box.


When it went all '8217', I copied the text into notepad then saved it in there and copied it back into the reply box - it still gave the error, so I let it be as an unreadable mess! :mad:

Reaper wrote: »

In the above example the first one is likely to fail but the second one is safe

Sorry - still don't understand - that looks like a different font, is that what you mean?

Reaper

J_B wrote: »

Sorry - still don't understand - that looks like a different font, is that what you mean?

No, the apostrophe is a completely different character in the two examples. In the same way a capital "A" is different to a lower case "a".

Behind the scenes computers store characters as numbers.
In the first example the apostrophe character is stored as 8217 which the forum can't cope with.
In the second example it is 39 which works fine.
I haven't shown an example of it but the open quote character (leaning the other way) is 8216 which I doubt the forum can cope with either.

If you write something in Word like 'Hello' it will try to be clever and substitute the single quote character you typed on your keyboard (37) at the start and end for open quote (8216) and close quote (8217).

Now you copy and paste that into the forum and you get a mess.

The same thing happens for iPhone/iPad users who type directly into the forum as it automatically does the same thing (unless they turn the "Smart Punctuation" feature off)

P.S. If you are interested to know what numbers represent which characters this page will tell you:
https://www.ascii.cl/htmlcodes.htm
If you scroll down to near the bottom you will see "right single quotation mark" is represented in decimal with 8217. The forum hasn't been told what character that represents so it just displays the number instead.

J_B

Reaper wrote: »

No, the apostrophe is a completely different character in the two examples.

<snip detailed post>

Cheers, but how do I, when typing on here, decide which apostrophe to use?

Reaper

J_B wrote: »

Cheers, but how do I, when typing on here, decide which apostrophe to use?

I'm not sure I can explain it any other way. Always use the vertical line style quote/apostrophe. If the text you are copying has any other type then change it otherwise you might have problems.

See my example illustration above.

J_B

Reaper wrote: »

I'm not sure I can explain it any other way. Always use the vertical line style quote/apostrophe. If the text you are copying has any other type then change it otherwise you might have problems.

See my example illustration above.

On my (standard UK) keyboard, towards the bottom right corner is the apostrophe and 'at' key

' or @


That looks like a vertical line to me, so I think you mean, 'keep calm and carry on' - correct?

J_B

MSE_Andrea wrote: »

I totally understand your frustration Half_way.

I promise this hasn't been forgotten.

Just another little reminder, in case you've forgotten ....


Another example
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.php?p=74377191

Anthorn

I have it on good authority that a two-seater aircraft crash-landed into a !!!8217; cemetery. !!!8217; authorities reported finding 300 dead and more were expected as digging continued.

Please note this post is not Xenophobic against !!!8217;