# Microsoft quotes issue

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/microsoft-quotes-issue/109887>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [July 19, 2007, 10:47pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/microsoft-quotes-issue/109887 "2007-07-19T22:47:55Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![trilok2000](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/977dab/32.png) [@trilok2000](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/trilok2000)\
**Post date:** [July 19, 2007, 10:47pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/microsoft-quotes-issue/109887/1 "2007-07-19T22:47:55Z")

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hi group,

I have an annoying issue.

? appears in place of ".

This is caused due to pasting the info from the Microsoft word. Word  
uses curly quotes instead of simple quotes. Can you please help me to  
fix this issue. Since I’m new to Ruby, this looks like a big issue for  
me 🙂

Thanks!

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**Author:** ![trilok2000](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/977dab/32.png) [@trilok2000](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/trilok2000)\
**Post date:** [July 20, 2007, 2:34am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/microsoft-quotes-issue/109887/2 "2007-07-20T02:34:22Z")

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This is not a Ruby or a Rails issue. More than likely the quotes fall  
at different code points in your database than in the code page  
you’ve specified for your page. I worried this issue for a couple of  
years on-and-off with a PHP site before concluding it had more to do  
with the way MySQL handles multibyte characters than anything else.

You might take Postgres out for a spin or … anyone else have ideas  
about how iconv or something else could remove the question marks?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![trilok2000](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/977dab/32.png) [@trilok2000](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/trilok2000)\
**Post date:** [July 20, 2007, 3:46am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/microsoft-quotes-issue/109887/3 "2007-07-20T03:46:29Z")

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> This is not a Ruby or a Rails issue. More than likely the quotes fall  
> at different code points in your database than in the code page  
> you’ve specified for your page. I worried this issue for a couple of  
> years on-and-off with a PHP site before concluding it had more to do  
> with the way MySQL handles multibyte characters than anything else.
> 
> You might take Postgres out for a spin or … anyone else have ideas  
> about how iconv or something else could remove the question marks?

Clean the input using tidy…

[http://tidy.rubyforge.org/](http://tidy.rubyforge.org/)

-philip