Mac characters on a PC

[Binky]

I regularly receive emails and text attachments from Mac users that contain weird characters. (The text, not the Mac users!)

I think it's only quote marks and apostrophes that get changed.

Does anyone know what I'm talking about and, if so, can you tell me (a) why this is happening and (b) is there a quick and easy way to convert all the characters?

Following is an example, although maybe they won't show up as the wrong characters once this is posted:

"...those ŒHow-on-earth-did-he-manage-that?¹ nights..."

and

"... ³It makes me want to throw my own drums in the fire,² he said..."

[John Kennett]

It's most likely because they are using "smart quotes" rather than regular quote marks. The same thing can happen in Windows, especially if you cut and paste from Word. So called smart quotes are curly (aka 66 and 99) and the basic character sets don't support them, using straight quotes instead.

I've put some below, but I'm not sure whether they will make it through the posting process:

“smart quotes”
"regular quotes"

Your best bet is to try to ask your Mac users not to use smart quotes, or to save attachments as plain text.

John