question regarding the_excerpt

Hi all.
I’m new to wordpress, to say that in advance. I noticed that the_excerpt() gives its text in an escaped form (i.e. “hi, it\’s me” instead of “hi, it’s me)). Is this made intentionally?
If not, which place would be better to fix that behaviour? Directly in get_the_excerpt() (which actually fetches the excerpt text and returns it as a string to the caller, and the caller is amongst others the_excerpt), or should it be fixed by each caller of get_the_excerpt() if needed?
Bye, Mike