# Email corruption **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 27, 2010, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/email-corruption/565554 "2010-12-27T23:34:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Cicero](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cicero/32/3594_2.png) [@Cicero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cicero)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2010, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/email-corruption/565554/1 "2010-12-27T23:34:37Z")
Friend of mine is getting some corruption in emails being received. I believe he would be using OE or a variant. He is not very much across computers and asking him would just produce a ? The problem is that apostrophes appear in his emails generally as ’ although there are other variants. I have googled and there are a lot of papers about this and it seems to be an encoding problem. However there are no answers given. Anyone have any suggestions how to fix this (preferably simply). I apologise in advance for the paucity of information. ---
**Author:** ![OldGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/3bc359/32.png) [@OldGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OldGuy)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2010, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/email-corruption/565554/2 "2010-12-28T00:09:19Z")
If it’s only his apostrophes and quotation marks that are bad, it’s likely that whoever is sending him the email is using “smart quotes”. That is the curly quotes that look a bit like 6 and 9 are in the email rather than the straight quote mark like this '. He’s probably reading his email in “plain text” and so is seeing the coding for the smart quotes. He wants to enable reading in HTML or some other method that will understand the coding. Unfortunately how to do that depends on the program he’s using for email. ---
**Author:** ![Cicero](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cicero/32/3594_2.png) [@Cicero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cicero)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2010, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/email-corruption/565554/3 "2010-12-28T04:13:05Z")
He is using Outlook Express and his program already has “plain text” unchecked. Thanks for the try though. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2010, 10:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/email-corruption/565554/4 "2010-12-28T10:16:21Z")
Which version of Windows is he using? This sounds like a Language / Regional Settings issue. He should check that everything is set to the same. ---
**Author:** ![Cicero](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cicero/32/3594_2.png) [@Cicero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cicero)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2010, 10:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/email-corruption/565554/5 "2010-12-28T10:38:37Z")
I _think_ he is on Vista- possibly XP. His settings are much the same as mine (Australian): Proportional = Verdana Fixed Width = Courier Mail Font Size = Medium Encoding = Western European (Windows) Default encoding = as above ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2010, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/email-corruption/565554/6 "2010-12-28T16:33:28Z")
I meant in Control Panel, not OE. Beyond that, have you tried [Quotefix] ([http://home.in.tum.de/~jain/software/oe-quotefix/](http://home.in.tum.de/~jain/software/oe-quotefix/))? ---
**Author:** ![Cicero](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cicero/32/3594_2.png) [@Cicero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cicero)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2010, 11:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/email-corruption/565554/7 "2010-12-29T11:38:50Z")
Thanks Quartz- I never knew that bit in the Control Panel existed. The problem has only occurred AFAIK in one email so I don’t think he would worry too much about Quotefix. Thanks for your help.