Unwanted Question Marks in posts

Yup.

First – keep the db backup. That’s important.

This is how I cured a blog earlier.
phpmyadmin
click to browse the wp_posts table
click SQL

In that box, paste this:
UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content=REPLACE(post_content, 'xyz', '');

where XYZ is the A with the hat and the ” are nothing.
It will replace all the A with nothing.

Copy/paste the A – don’t try and make it.

Then refresh the page – but delete the cache FIRST or you will see a cached page.

The above worked for me – but do keep the backup!

Podz – This seems to be a solution for getting rid of the “A”s, but the “A”s don’t seem to be a problem since they don’t show up when I view the blog.

What is showing up are Question Marks, and I can’t find a source for them when I look at the data in phpMyAdmin.

Use podz’s suggestion, but cut and past the question marks instead of the A’s…

The problem with that solution is that I’ll lose every real question mark! Besides, if I can’t see the Q-marks in the database data (I only see the Q-marks when I view the blog) would that solution work?

The A’s in the db become ? on the blog.

The ? are white with a black surround?
Replace the A’s and the ? will go.

No — I moved my SQL data from a db on my old host server to a new db on my new host server with a new wp install. All the old posts look ok in phpMyAdmin, but when I view the new blog install, they show up with Q-marks.

When I created a new post in the new db on the new host using the new wp install, I see A’s in the data, but the post looks fine when I view the blog.

So the ?’s and A’s are not directly related to one another.

Let me ask in a different way: are the capital “A” with a carrot above things in the DB in the same place where question marks appear on display?

Edit. OK, typing slowly…

Since the A’s and ?’s are not found in the same posts, then no.

HOWEVER, both the ?’s and A’s both often appear after periods (“.”), so they do seem related in this way.

If you have a backup copy of the database, why not try what I said above?

I really did cure a blog with 3 months of entries earlier by doing what I said – and if it all goes wrong, you nuke the db and start over.

UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content=REPLACE(post_content, ‘xyz’, ”);

where XYZ is the A with the hat and the ” are nothing.
It will replace all the A with nothing.

Tried it and got an interesting result…

It did not eliminate the ?’s in the posts that had ?’s. However, the new post which had no ?’s and had the A’s now has the unwanted ?’s.

So when I removed the A’s I got ?’s. Weird.

Fixed it:

When I looked carefully at the post text I discovered that their were two unique characters used for spaces. One seemed to be the normal space character, and then there was a second space character which appeared less frequently.

I used the SQL query podz gave me and replaced that second space character with nothing. Voila, no more ?’s in my blog.

Obviously something on my new host server (either the new wordpress install or some software package) was interpreting this space character as a ?.

Thanks for the help guys!

I’m having the exact same problem with question marks. I tried podz query, with the A in place of xyz, I got the same result as muomega–it replaced the A’s with ? marks.

My question is about the “unique characters” muomega found. In the database, everything looks normal. Where would I find these unique characters? In the database? In the code? Thanks in advance for your help.