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**Category:** Classic Servoy\
**Created:** [May 5, 2004, 9:26am UTC](https://forum.servoy.com/t/problem-with-character-entities-in-html-area/1848 "2004-05-05T09:26:47Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1
**Author:**  [@swingman](https://forum.servoy.com/u/swingman)\
**Post date:** [May 5, 2004, 9:26am UTC](https://forum.servoy.com/t/problem-with-character-entities-in-html-area/1848/1 "2004-05-05T09:26:47Z")
We are using Servoy to edit a PHP-based website. The database is in MySQL 4. We’d like to display proper curly quotes in our HTML pages,
If we type in ASCII characters 182 and 183, they display fine in our HTML preview area, but show up as small boxes in the webpage.
If we use ‘ and ‘ entites they display fine in the webpage, but our HTML preview area displays “&lsquo” and “&rsquo”…
Any way around this?
Mac OS X 10.3.3, Servoy 2.0
[performance\_downgrade.zip](https://forum.servoy.com/uploads/short-url/dmgku2uMTkwcZzk1bPXDjzoqVQb.zip) (712 Bytes)
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**Author:**  [@jcompagner](https://forum.servoy.com/u/jcompagner)\
**Post date:** [May 6, 2004, 3:15pm UTC](https://forum.servoy.com/t/problem-with-character-entities-in-html-area/1848/2 "2004-05-06T15:15:18Z")
can mysql 4 already handly pure unicode?
Then you should try to use that. Because then you have never those kind of conversion problems.
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**Author:**  [@Jan\_Blok](https://forum.servoy.com/u/Jan_Blok)\
**Post date:** [May 6, 2004, 3:28pm UTC](https://forum.servoy.com/t/problem-with-character-entities-in-html-area/1848/3 "2004-05-06T15:28:55Z")
What johan is saying you could alter your html doc type to support unicode,
another option is to try ```
& # 182 ; without the spaces to prevent forum to show only result 🙂
```it
```
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**Author:**  [@swingman](https://forum.servoy.com/u/swingman)\
**Post date:** [May 7, 2004, 12:40am UTC](https://forum.servoy.com/t/problem-with-character-entities-in-html-area/1848/4 "2004-05-07T00:40:53Z")
> Jan Blok:
> try ```
> & # 182 ; without the spaces to prevent forum to show only result 🙂
>
> ```auto
>
> ```
Sorry, I didn’t realise before I ready your reply that my example entities had been replaced…
What you suggest works fine, but the codes are different: I found the following reference for the entities to use:
> **[Character entity references in HTML 4](https://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/sgml/entities.html)**
So my quotes become & # 8216; and & # 8217; They now display correctly in both the HTML\_AREA and in the webpage.