I have a table, Articles, of news articles (in English) with three text columns for the intro, body, and caption. The data came from a web page, and the content was cut and pasted from other sources. I am finding that there are some non utf-8 characters in these three text columns. I would like to (1) convert these text fields to be strict utf-8 and then (2) fix the input page to keep all new submissions utf-8.
91) For the first step, fixing the current database, I tried: update Articles set body = CONVERT(body USING ASCII); However, when I checked one of the articles I found an apostrophe had been converted into a question mark. (FWIW, the apostrophe was one of those offending non utf-8 characters): Before conversion: "I stepped into the observatory’s control room ..." After conversion: "I stepped into the observatory?s control room..." Is there a better way to accomplish my first goal, without reading each article and manually making the changes? (2) For the second goal, insuring that all future articles are utf-8, do I need to change the table structure or the insert query to insure I get the correct utf-8 characters into the database? Thanks, Mark
