replace MSWord smart quotes in asp.net webform

Question

I am having a problem where users are composing some large chunks of text in MS Word, then pasting that in to the online form. These get entered into the DB as an upside down ?. What are my options to replace these with standard quotes?

Answer 1

These smart quotes are a unicode point. All you need is a simple String.Replace to sort them out.

-edit- Something like:

mystring.Replace("\u201C","\"").Replace("\u201D","\"")

Answer 2

What are my options to replace these with standard quotes?

The best approach is not to replace them. People want to use “smart quotes”, let them. They're not aberrations that only exist in MS Word, they're perfectly valid Unicode characters, and if your application isn't storing non-ASCII characters right then there's a whole lot more that will go wrong than just smart quotes.

Use UTF-8 encoding for all your web pages and store your content in a Unicode-capable database (eg. if you are using SQL Server, use NVARCHAR) and you'll not only support smart quotes but also accents and other alphabets.

Answer 3

You should run the input through the HtmlEncode method, which will convert from “ or ” to “ and ”, allowing you to save those and other higher characters to a format that can be saved without hassle.

Should I also mention Joel's post again?

The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Absolutely, Positively Must Know About Unicode and Character Sets (No Excuses!)