Weird characters showing up randomly in posts since 3/3

[quaint]

Last edited Wed Mar 4, 2026, 05:11 PM - Edit history (2)

Example: https://www.democraticunderground.com/1127188009
The company�s announcement cites �significant competition� from generic producers of paraquat and a �less than 1 percent� contribution to the company�s global sales as reasons for exiting the paraquat business.

Any idea what silly thing I've done to cause this?
Fire tablet Silk ( )

Edit: Testing a plausible theory. Hoping edit is causing this and not my truly stupid, unhelpful browser.
2nd edit to fix typos in 1st edit.

[dweller]

1. I think

It has something to do with editing of the post .
Click the info tab on the post
Check the original post
Check the edited version

The glyphs show up after editing


thats my theory



✌🏻

[quaint]

6. Thanks, I edited twice but no new glyphs.

[canetoad]

2. It originates with the

Character encoding of the text. I tried to post an example few minutes ago, but received 403 Forbidden message.

HTML Encoding (Character Sets)
The HTML charset Attribute

To display an HTML page correctly, a web browser must know which character set to use.

https://www.w3schools.com/html/html_charset.asp

Now, this could be on the DU server side as the admins gear up for cyber attacks from magats, or it could be your browser. You will probably need to search your browser settings for "Character encoding" and see what you find.

[dweller]

3. Try this

Edit your post … just add a word or number or anything
Update it
The glyphs will show up in your edited post


Try it


✌🏻

[hunter]

5. I'm going to try it with this:

�It�s particularly significant given the ICE tactics we�re seeing in the streets � so counter to the way policing has evolved and improved over the last several years,� she said.

Yep.

Has something change in the software these websites are using?

Here's something from the BBC:

"It's my strong belief that the tariff rates will be back to their old rate within five months," Bessent told CNBC.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjwzzq70qgvo

bbc.com and dw.com are not using the troublesome characters.

[quaint]

7. I am disappointed that you are probably correct, no pertinent result when I searched Silk help, etc.

I search Character encoding and received one result from 2022 regarding foreign. characters. Sigh.

[walkingman]

4. Yes, as explained above.....character set

I use it to create the degree symbol ex. " 96° "....Alt 0176 [using num keypad]

[quaint]

8. Thank you.

[Inkey]

9. I am trying to collect these anomalies in different posts

Using view-source
So far these are the glitches I have found :
�
� repeated in your post when � is present

Not sure this helps Google thinks this � this might be an encoding error : Summary: � is a broken character caused by improper text encoding conversion. It is most commonly a substitution for accented characters or punctuation.

Why it is happening now is a mystery to me also .

[quaint]

11. Oops, please see my reply #10, intended for you.

Seem to make that mistake frequently these days, 76 in three weeks, Sigh.

[quaint]

10. Here is another example

(CN) — Leo Grillo (from original Courthouse News Service)

(CN) � Leo Grillo (from DU OP)

[Just_Vote_Dem]

12. I physically went back and edited my post as I had these weird characters

I was able to edit, backspace, and put the right characters in

[quaint]

13. Easy workaround, thanks.