this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2024
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Everything is 0s and 1s to a computer. What a pattern of 0s and 1s encodes is decided by people--often arbitrarily. Over the years there have been attempts to standardize encodings but, for legacy reasons, older encodings are still valid.
The 0s and 1s that encode ' in UTF-8 (a standardized encoding) are the same 0s and 1s that encode ’ in CP-1252 (a legacy encoding).
The � symbol is shown when the 0s and 1s don't encode anything of meaning.
Good to see it "spelt out" like that