UTF Encoding Validation Error, Rendering in IE

Good day everyone. This is my first post in this forum.

I am currently helping a friend of mine in South America who is setting up a news site using WordPress 2.6. This is a Spanish language site he has not yet “opened” officially, though you can view the current homepage at: https://minuto60.com

There is a rendering problem with the text in the sidebar at the lower right of the page where he has an HTML form with an array of radio-buttons used to conduct an online poll. The form begins with the text that says “Sondeo de Opinión” which, if you are viewing it in Internet Explorer (I’m using version 7), is presented with an oversize font, which is the problem and which I believe may relate to UTF encoding, as I will explain.

I have used the HTML Markup Validator service here on the WordPress site for the homepage and it returned the following error msg:

“Sorry, I am unable to validate this document because on line 952 it contained one or more bytes that I cannot interpret as utf-8 (in other words, the bytes found are not valid values in the specified Character Encoding). Please check both the content of the file and the character encoding indication.

The error was: utf8 “\xF3” does not map to Unicode”

I understand the error quite clearly, but my question is this:

Can this error be corrected within WordPress — possibly through the use of an available plug-in or is there a different DTD that can be identified within the template that will permit rendering of Spanish language characters (or possibly an HTML or XHTML Meta Tag) or does the solution rest within Windows (possibly requiring a reset of the registry)?

By way of general information I am an internet applications developer and I believe I should be competent (famous last words?) to handle a recommended change. But this is my first experience with WordPress though I am more than familiar with blog skin templates, CSS, and HTML and XML.

I thank anyone who responds.

Jacob Sulzbach