Garbled Characters

Paste text full of ’ and é and copy it with the right characters back.

Garbled Characters

Sample below. Your text takes its place.

Direction: garbled text to fixed text

Sample fixed text

It’s 20°C at the café – the crème brûlée is £4…

More options

Letter for letter, from the table under the tool. A character with no entry stays exactly as you typed it. The way back says when two letters share one code.

Next step See the bytes behind each characterStray line breaks too? Take them out

All 119 characters

Punctuation and signs 48

  • Acute accent U+00B4. Garbled as ´.
  • Broken bar U+00A6. Garbled as ¦.
  • Bullet U+2022. Garbled as •.
  • Cedilla U+00B8. Garbled as ¸.
  • Cent sign U+00A2. Garbled as ¢.
  • Copyright sign U+00A9. Garbled as ©.
  • Currency sign U+00A4. Garbled as ¤.
  • Degree sign U+00B0. Garbled as °.
  • Diaeresis U+00A8. Garbled as ¨.
  • Division sign U+00F7. Garbled as ÷.
  • Double dagger U+2021. Garbled as ‡.
  • Double low-9 quotation mark U+201E. Garbled as „.
  • Em dash U+2014. Garbled as —.
  • En dash U+2013. Garbled as –.
  • Euro sign U+20AC. Garbled as €.
  • Feminine ordinal indicator U+00AA. Garbled as ª.
  • Horizontal ellipsis U+2026. Garbled as ….
  • Inverted exclamation mark U+00A1. Garbled as ¡.
  • Inverted question mark U+00BF. Garbled as ¿.
  • Left double quotation mark U+201C. Garbled as “.
  • Left single quotation mark U+2018. Garbled as ‘.
  • Left-pointing double angle quotation mark U+00AB. Garbled as «.
  • Macron U+00AF. Garbled as ¯.
  • Masculine ordinal indicator U+00BA. Garbled as º.
Show all 119 characters (95 more)

Punctuation and signs, continued

  • Micro sign U+00B5. Garbled as µ.
  • Middle dot U+00B7. Garbled as ·.
  • Multiplication sign U+00D7. Garbled as ×.
  • Not sign U+00AC. Garbled as ¬.
  • Per mille sign U+2030. Garbled as ‰.
  • Pilcrow sign U+00B6. Garbled as ¶.
  • Plus-minus sign U+00B1. Garbled as ±.
  • Pound sign U+00A3. Garbled as £.
  • Registered sign U+00AE. Garbled as ®.
  • Right double quotation mark U+201D. Garbled as †and a third character that cannot be seen. A bare †is read as this quote.
  • Right single quotation mark U+2019. Garbled as ’.
  • Right-pointing double angle quotation mark U+00BB. Garbled as ».
  • Section sign U+00A7. Garbled as §.
  • Single left-pointing angle quotation mark U+2039. Garbled as ‹.
  • Single low-9 quotation mark U+201A. Garbled as ‚.
  • Single right-pointing angle quotation mark U+203A. Garbled as ›.
  • Superscript one U+00B9. Garbled as ¹.
  • Superscript three U+00B3. Garbled as ³.
  • Superscript two U+00B2. Garbled as ².
  • Trade mark sign U+2122. Garbled as â„¢.
  • Vulgar fraction one half U+00BD. Garbled as ½.
  • Vulgar fraction one quarter U+00BC. Garbled as ¼.
  • Vulgar fraction three quarters U+00BE. Garbled as ¾.
  • Yen sign U+00A5. Garbled as Â¥.

Accented letters 62

  • Latin capital letter a with circumflex U+00C2. Garbled as Â.
  • Latin capital letter a with diaeresis U+00C4. Garbled as Ä.
  • Latin capital letter a with grave U+00C0. Garbled as À.
  • Latin capital letter a with ring above U+00C5. Garbled as Ã….
  • Latin capital letter a with tilde U+00C3. Garbled as Ã.
  • Latin capital letter ae U+00C6. Garbled as Æ.
  • Latin capital letter c with cedilla U+00C7. Garbled as Ç.
  • Latin capital letter e with acute U+00C9. Garbled as É.
  • Latin capital letter e with circumflex U+00CA. Garbled as Ê.
  • Latin capital letter e with diaeresis U+00CB. Garbled as Ë.
  • Latin capital letter e with grave U+00C8. Garbled as È.
  • Latin capital letter i with circumflex U+00CE. Garbled as ÃŽ.
  • Latin capital letter i with grave U+00CC. Garbled as ÃŒ.
  • Latin capital letter n with tilde U+00D1. Garbled as Ñ.
  • Latin capital letter o with acute U+00D3. Garbled as Ó.
  • Latin capital letter o with circumflex U+00D4. Garbled as Ô.
  • Latin capital letter o with diaeresis U+00D6. Garbled as Ö.
  • Latin capital letter o with grave U+00D2. Garbled as Ã’.
  • Latin capital letter o with stroke U+00D8. Garbled as Ø.
  • Latin capital letter o with tilde U+00D5. Garbled as Õ.
  • Latin capital letter thorn U+00DE. Garbled as Þ.
  • Latin capital letter u with acute U+00DA. Garbled as Ú.
  • Latin capital letter u with circumflex U+00DB. Garbled as Û.
  • Latin capital letter u with diaeresis U+00DC. Garbled as Ãœ.
  • Latin capital letter u with grave U+00D9. Garbled as Ù.
  • Latin capital letter y with diaeresis U+0178. Garbled as Ÿ.
  • Latin capital letter z with caron U+017D. Garbled as Ž.
  • Latin capital ligature oe U+0152. Garbled as Å’.
  • Latin small letter a with acute U+00E1. Garbled as á.
  • Latin small letter a with circumflex U+00E2. Garbled as â.
  • Latin small letter a with diaeresis U+00E4. Garbled as ä.
  • Latin small letter a with ring above U+00E5. Garbled as Ã¥.
  • Latin small letter a with tilde U+00E3. Garbled as ã.
  • Latin small letter ae U+00E6. Garbled as æ.
  • Latin small letter c with cedilla U+00E7. Garbled as ç.
  • Latin small letter e with acute U+00E9. Garbled as é.
  • Latin small letter e with circumflex U+00EA. Garbled as ê.
  • Latin small letter e with diaeresis U+00EB. Garbled as ë.
  • Latin small letter e with grave U+00E8. Garbled as è.
  • Latin small letter eth U+00F0. Garbled as ð.
  • Latin small letter i with acute U+00ED. Garbled as à and a soft hyphen, which most screens do not show. Written for "í".
  • Latin small letter i with circumflex U+00EE. Garbled as î.
  • Latin small letter i with diaeresis U+00EF. Garbled as ï.
  • Latin small letter i with grave U+00EC. Garbled as ì.
  • Latin small letter n with tilde U+00F1. Garbled as ñ.
  • Latin small letter o with acute U+00F3. Garbled as ó.
  • Latin small letter o with circumflex U+00F4. Garbled as ô.
  • Latin small letter o with diaeresis U+00F6. Garbled as ö.
  • Latin small letter o with grave U+00F2. Garbled as ò.
  • Latin small letter o with stroke U+00F8. Garbled as ø.
  • Latin small letter o with tilde U+00F5. Garbled as õ.
  • Latin small letter s with caron U+0161. Garbled as Å¡.
  • Latin small letter sharp s U+00DF. Garbled as ß.
  • Latin small letter thorn U+00FE. Garbled as þ.
  • Latin small letter u with acute U+00FA. Garbled as ú.
  • Latin small letter u with circumflex U+00FB. Garbled as û.
  • Latin small letter u with diaeresis U+00FC. Garbled as ü.
  • Latin small letter u with grave U+00F9. Garbled as ù.
  • Latin small letter y with acute U+00FD. Garbled as ý.
  • Latin small letter y with diaeresis U+00FF. Garbled as ÿ.
  • Latin small letter z with caron U+017E. Garbled as ž.
  • Latin small ligature oe U+0153. Garbled as Å“.

Not repaired by this page 9

  • Dagger U+2020. Garbled as †and a no-break space. Not repaired: the bare †is read as a closing quote, which is wrong for this sign.
  • Latin capital letter a with acute U+00C1. Garbled as à and a character that cannot be seen. Five letters share that look, so a bare à stays.
  • Latin capital letter eth U+00D0. Garbled as à and a character that cannot be seen. Five letters share that look, so a bare à stays.
  • Latin capital letter i with acute U+00CD. Garbled as à and a character that cannot be seen. Five letters share that look, so a bare à stays.
  • Latin capital letter i with diaeresis U+00CF. Garbled as à and a character that cannot be seen. Five letters share that look, so a bare à stays.
  • Latin capital letter s with caron U+0160. Garbled as Å and a no-break space. Not repaired: the bare Å stays.
  • Latin capital letter y with acute U+00DD. Garbled as à and a character that cannot be seen. Five letters share that look, so a bare à stays.
  • Latin small letter a with grave U+00E0. Garbled as à and a no-break space. Not repaired: the bare à stays.
  • No-break space U+00A0. Garbled as  and a no-break space, which looks like  and a plain space. Not repaired: the stray  stays.

How this list was compiled: Computed on 2026-10-01, not copied. Each garbled run is the character's UTF-8 bytes read one byte at a time through the windows-1252 index of the WHATWG Encoding Standard (https://encoding.spec.whatwg.org/index-windows-1252.txt, index dated 2024-09-18, fetched 2026-10-01); each reading was checked against a standard windows-1252 decoder. Character names: https://www.unicode.org/Public/18.0.0/ucd/UnicodeData.txt (Unicode 18.0.0), fetched the same day. Rows: 110 repairs (General Punctuation and currency signs, the Latin-1 Supplement signs and letters, and six letters that Windows-1252 itself holds) and 9 rows that are printed and not repaired, because the garbled run ends in a no-break space or in one of the five bytes Windows-1252 leaves unassigned (0x81, 0x8D, 0x8F, 0x90, 0x9D), which the index reads as control characters. The closing double quote is the one exception: the tool drops control characters from pasted text, so its first two characters are matched alone. Every repair was run through the page's own translate code, there and back, and typed on a built page. Why the fault happens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojibake, read 2026-10-01. Licence: own work (computed from the WHATWG Encoding Standard index and the Unicode Character Database, Unicode License v3)

How it works

Garbled characters such as ’ and é appear when a program reads UTF-8 text as Windows-1252. Paste the text and this page puts back the quote, dash or accented letter that was meant. Every repair it makes is listed underneath.

Read the full guide

Why text gets garbled

Wikipedia's article on the fault, which it calls mojibake, records that UTF-8 read as Windows-1252 is the most common case today. UTF-8 stores ’ as three bytes and £ as two. The wrong reader shows every byte as a character of its own, so ’ turns into ’ and £ into £.

What it cannot repair

A few garbled runs end in a character no screen shows. A stray  in front of a space stays, and so does a bare Ã, which could be any of six letters, à and Á among them. Empty boxes are a different fault: a missing font, not a wrong reading.

  • Text garbled twice, such as ’, needs two passes: copy the result and paste it back in.
  • Swap runs the list the other way and shows what a wrong reader makes of clean text.

Questions and answers

Why do I see ’ instead of an apostrophe?

The curly apostrophe is three bytes in UTF-8. A program that reads them as Windows-1252 shows three characters: â, € and ™. Paste the text here and the three become one apostrophe again.

What does é mean?

It is é. In UTF-8 the letter is two bytes, and Windows-1252 shows them as à and ©. The other accented letters go the same way: è is è, ñ is ñ and ü is ü.

Why is there a stray  in my text?

It is the first byte of a sign that takes two. £ is £ and ° is °, and this page repairs both. A  in front of a space is a garbled no-break space, and that one stays.

Can garbled text always be repaired?

No. Where a program has already put a question mark or � in place of a character, nothing is left to read. This page repairs the runs on its list, where every byte is still there as a character.

More tools

Show 8 more

Browse Text styles