# French characters not showing in form error messages

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/french-characters-not-showing-in-form-error-messages/193771>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [August 24, 2010, 6:03am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/french-characters-not-showing-in-form-error-messages/193771 "2010-08-24T06:03:20Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![mitch\_newbie](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/ea5d25/32.png) [@mitch\_newbie](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mitch_newbie)\
**Post date:** [August 24, 2010, 6:03am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/french-characters-not-showing-in-form-error-messages/193771/1 "2010-08-24T06:03:20Z")

</div>

I have a form for the user to fill out and submit. If the user does not  
supply all of the required information a red box with details about the  
missing information is shown to the user.

The problem is that these error messages are escaped in Rails code so  
the french accents are not being shown. Just the Unicode for the french  
accents as shown in the attachment to this topic.

I am using UTF-8 for the website. The accents work on other parts of  
the site. I do not escape using the h helper function or the accents  
just don’t show.

Any help on how to get the accents to show in the error messages?

Thanks in advance

Mitchell