WP randomly enters a curly quote and breaks the code..

Have you tried:

– deactivating all plugins to see if this resolves the problem? If this works, re-activate the plugins one by one until you find the problematic plugin(s).

– switching to the Twenty Ten theme to rule out any theme-specific problems?

– resetting the plugins folder by FTP or phpMyAdmin? Sometimes, an apparently inactive plugin can still cause problems.

Are you pasting content in from anywhere else?

Ms E Diva

Thank you. Good suggestions. Is the Twenty-Ten theme one to test all others?

Have you heard of this before? Considering that I am in the admin area entering text, and even without touching those quotes that change, do you really think it can be theme related? I don’t believe it ever occurred before WP 3.0.1.

I have always entered my posts directly into WP (HTML), but that’s where the problems now occur. To fix the broken code, I copy the post and paste it into BBedit which quickly tells me where the curly quotes appear. I replace the curly quotes, copy and paste back to WP, save, preview, and everything is fine.

It only seems to occur when I enter text into the WP post field and save that the code breaks.

Is the Twenty-Ten theme one to test all others?

It’s the default theme for WordPress 3.0. It’s coded to specific standards and does not contain anything other than the functionality provided by WordPress itself. For these reasons, it’s used as the standard when troubleshooting possible theme problems.

Have you heard of this before?

This, or similar – yes. It could be a poor theme or a bad plugin. Or it could be a database issue. You really have to run through a process of elimination to find the source of the problem.

Curve ball.

The culprit appears to be the browser: Safari 5.0.3

I did all the things that would change the quotes and mess-up the code, using Google Chrome, and I could not replicate the problem. Each preview was correct.

I performed the exact same changes using Safari, and on the first preview, I immediately had messed-up code.

Ack! Now that’s awkward. I don’t know Safari well enough to suggest any configuration changes that might help. I do know there’s been some long-running problems with various versions of Safari and WordPress. whether this is another or is peculiar to your Safari install, I couldn’t say.

Sorry – I’m not being much help, am I?

Incorrect-o-mundo: I learned good stuff from you.

I figured the only configuration change would be to ensure I had a Web font selected, which is why I noted “Verdana” in the opening post. Safari did recently have a major update to v5, so they could have introduced the bug with it.

I’ll attempt to file a report with Apple.

Thanks for your help, Diva ma’am. I usually figure stuff out myself, but if another unsolved mystery turns up, we’ll chat again.

Glad to have helped in whatever way I could.