Help & Support

Why do unwanted characters appear in my post, comment, or page?

Occasionally, when you paste text into Knowledge Commons from Microsoft Word, email applications, or other formatted sources, you may see strange symbols or unwanted characters appear in your post or comment. This happens because these programs include hidden formatting that doesn’t translate cleanly into the web editor.

Fortunately, there are simple ways to avoid this.

In this article

  • Use the Text Editor (When Available)
  • If You Don’t See Visual/Text Tabs: Convert to Plain Text First
    • How to Convert Your Document to Plain Text
  • Why This Happens

Use the Text Editor (When Available)

If you are posting in a space that gives you the option to choose between Visual and Text editing modes:

  1. Click the Text tab before pasting your content.
  2. Paste your text—this removes hidden formatting.
  3. Switch back to Visual mode to apply any styling you need.

Screenshot placeholder showing Visual and Text tabs

This method strips the text of problematic markup while preserving your ability to format afterward.

If You Don’t See Visual/Text Tabs: Convert to Plain Text First

Some posting areas (including Docs or certain blocks in the WordPress editor) may not display Visual/Text tabs. In that case, you should convert your text to plain text before pasting it.

How to Convert Your Document to Plain Text

  1. Open your original file in Microsoft Word or another word processor.
  2. Select File → Save As.
  3. Choose a new file name so your original remains intact.
  4. Change the file type to Plain Text (.txt).
  5. Save the file.
  6. Open the new .txt file.
  7. Copy and paste the content from the plain-text file into the Commons.

Saving as plain text removes all hidden markup, “smart quotes,” and other embedded formatting that can cause unwanted characters to appear.

Why This Happens

Programs like Word and email clients use:

  • Smart quotes
  • Hidden HTML
  • Styles
  • Copy/paste metadata

These do not always translate cleanly to the Commons’ editor, causing text such as:

  • ’ instead of an apostrophe
  • — instead of an em dash
  •  or other unexpected symbols

Using the Text editor or converting to plain text ensures that only clean, web-friendly text is pasted into your content.