Posted on 01/15/2016 6:41:54 AM PST by reaganaut1
I have found that the site Replace smart quotes with regular straight quotes fixes the problem Free Republic recently has with quotes and dashes. For example, a New York Times article As Germany Welcomes Migrants, Sexual Attacks in Cologne Point to a New Reality that when originally pasted looks like this:
COLOGNE, Germany — In early December, the Cologne police made their New Year’s Eve preparations. Drawing on the previous year’s experience, they identified their biggest worry as pickpocketing and fireworks among the crowds. So they increased their holiday deployment, to 142 from 88, concentrating on the banks of the Rhine River, where revelers traditionally gather for a giant fireworks display.
As 2016 neared on Dec. 31, however, some 1,500 men, including some newly arrived asylum seekers and many other immigrants, had instead assembled around Cologne’s train station. Drunk and dismissive of the police, they took advantage of an overwhelmed force to sexually assault and rob hundreds of people, according to police reports, shocking Germany and stoking anxieties over absorbing refugees across Europe.
“We were just pressed on all sides by people,†recalled one victim, Johanna, 18, who agreed to speak by telephone from Lake Constance, Germany, where she lives, only if her last name was not used, fearing hostility, particularly over social media. “I was grabbed continually. I have never experienced such a thing in any German city.â€
becomes this
COLOGNE, Germany -- In early December, the Cologne police made their New Year's Eve preparations. Drawing on the previous year's experience, they identified their biggest worry as pickpocketing and fireworks among the crowds. So they increased their holiday deployment, to 142 from 88, concentrating on the banks of the Rhine River, where revelers traditionally gather for a giant fireworks display.
As 2016 neared on Dec. 31, however, some 1,500 men, including some newly arrived asylum seekers and many other immigrants, had instead assembled around Cologne's train station. Drunk and dismissive of the police, they took advantage of an overwhelmed force to sexually assault and rob hundreds of people, according to police reports, shocking Germany and stoking anxieties over absorbing refugees across Europe.
"We were just pressed on all sides by people," recalled one victim, Johanna, 18, who agreed to speak by telephone from Lake Constance, Germany, where she lives, only if her last name was not used, fearing hostility, particularly over social media. "I was grabbed continually. I have never experienced such a thing in any German city."
I have windows 7 and never saw the problem until windows 10 rolled out. Maybe the timing is a coincidence.
I’ve cut and pasted straight quotes from FR and had the correct the hieroglyphics.
I use Mac OS X and I still get the funky characters.
I’ve been using this site, but why did the problem pop up all of a sudden?
When this problem first cropped up, JR said they were working on a fix. That was before Thanksgiving.
Me too
It's been two months. Does JohnRob have any timeline?
As lowly linux user, I still see the odd characters.
My guess is the choice of character encoding has changed?
I've known you for 16-17 years.
You've always hung out with strange characters.
I won’t point any fingers, but it should be noted that, birds of a feather flock together.
Or so they say.
No way it’s a Windows 10 problem. This site runs on Linux. I can repro the issue by copying abd pasting a post from my iPad. No Windows involved there.
You Windows bashers amaze me...
Wasn’t it some kind of wacky virus?
I may be totally wrong here, but I am wondering if Jim has tried using a regular closing on the charset meta tag instead of the XHTML version. In other words, instead of the closing tag looking like this /> just using > without the slash?
It might be worth a try.
Please forgive me, Jim, if I am beating a dead horse here.
“few weeks ago...”??? This has been going on for months.
I use this before posting articles:
http://dan.hersam.com/tools/smart-quotes.html
Only takes a few seconds to copy and paste.
Well, that’s the same site I linked. GMTA.
CAAAWW CAAAWW
I’m not a Windows basher, I noticed the problem blow up when Windows 10 rolled out. That’s all. Not saying I’m right.
As of right now, I am going to start leave off the quotes “ and contractions ‘. It takes a long time to “fix” the symbol problems in a long post.
When I went to university, besides getting a Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology/Psychological Examining, I got a minor in English and Business Administration and it just irritates me to have mistakes in writing. However, until this symbol thing is fixed, I'm leaving off the symbols that screw up.
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