I’m amazed at how frequently I receive ezines with strange characters in the subject line. As an example, instead of [Tara’s Tips] September 2009, the email subject line will say [Tara’s Tips] September 2009.

What’s going on here?

Surely “Tara” didn’t intentionally put that gobbledygook in there. Or in the body of the ezine either, where I also see similar weird characters cropping up. The usual culprits are apostrophes, quote marks, long dashes (“em” dashes) and ellipses.

What’s happening is actually very simple — and very easy to correct. The characters are the result of cutting and pasting a subject line from Microsoft Word directly into the text box for the subject line. This happens when using an ESP (email service provider), not when sending from your own email program.

The problem with quotes and apostrophes originates with a preference setting in MS Word called “smart quotes.” When enabled, this preference is what gives the “curly” quotes in a Word document. But in HTML (web language), these curly quotes and apostrophes, etc., render as a grouping of weird characters.

There are two ways to avoid it — and please do one or the other, cuz it makes your emails look really bad! The first is to turn off “smart quotes.” Go to wherever the AutoCorrect preferences are in your Word program; under “Replace as You Type,” select the straight quotes option.

The second way is to simply type your subject line in directly, rather than cut and paste from Word. Or you can re-type just the quote marks or apostrophes.

For an ellipsis, you’ll also want to re-type three periods. And if you’ve got a long dash (“em” dash) in the subject line, I recommend using a colon instead.