# Weird characters, like –, displaying

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/weird-characters-like-a-a-a-oe-displaying/93265>\
**Category:** Rails I18n\
**Created:** [April 30, 2007, 7:06am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/weird-characters-like-a-a-a-oe-displaying/93265 "2007-04-30T07:06:22Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![blacknight](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/c68b51/32.png) [@blacknight](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/blacknight)\
**Post date:** [April 30, 2007, 7:06am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/weird-characters-like-a-a-a-oe-displaying/93265/1 "2007-04-30T07:06:22Z")

</div>

I’m getting weird characters displaying on my pages, e.g.: –.

I’m using MySQL and my database encoding is set to utf8 and I set the  
character set for my pages to render as utf8 with .

Does anyone know how to get rid of these characters?

Thanks,  
Ben

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![blacknight](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/c68b51/32.png) [@blacknight](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/blacknight)\
**Post date:** [April 30, 2007, 9:40am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/weird-characters-like-a-a-a-oe-displaying/93265/2 "2007-04-30T09:40:14Z")

</div>

On 4/30/07, Ben W. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> I’m getting weird characters displaying on my pages, e.g.: â€".
> 
> I’m using MySQL and my database encoding is set to utf8 and I set the  
> character set for my pages to render as utf8 with .

Sure your browser is using the right encoding? If not, try setting the  
http Content-Type header. More reliable for me than a meta tag.

Isak

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![blacknight](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/c68b51/32.png) [@blacknight](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/blacknight)\
**Post date:** [April 30, 2007, 4:15pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/weird-characters-like-a-a-a-oe-displaying/93265/3 "2007-04-30T16:15:41Z")

</div>

> Sure your browser is using the right encoding? If not, try setting the  
> http Content-Type header. More reliable for me than a meta tag.

Yes, the page seems to be set up fine. I’ve also tried installing the  
BrowserFilters plugin, but that did not work either.

I have a feeling it may be the case that when these characters were  
originally put into the database, they were somehow entered incorrectly.  
I seem to be able to enter the correct characters–i.e., curly  
quotes–myself and they save and display fine. Is there any way to do  
some sort of search and replace on these guys?

Thanks for the help.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![blacknight](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/c68b51/32.png) [@blacknight](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/blacknight)\
**Post date:** [May 1, 2007, 11:14am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/weird-characters-like-a-a-a-oe-displaying/93265/4 "2007-05-01T11:14:43Z")

</div>

You should also make sure that the browser is submitting the  
information as UTF8. If I recall, it’s sufficient to declare the page  
with the form in it as utf8, but you might want to double-check that.

Search and replace is going to be tough unless there’s an existing  
script around for doing that.

One thing you could do is try writing a script in Java (or Ruby) that  
reads a known bad row from the database and converts it various ways  
and prints it out until you know exactly what conversion you’re going  
to need.

Programmatically detecting the messed-up strings seems like it would  
be more difficult, though, unless there are some clear constraints on  
what those strings should contain (i.e., something you can run a regex  
on), which might be the case if it’s, say, a validated form field.

Jun-Dai