Why do apostrophes sometimes show up as ' on Yahoo Answers?

Because *their* code pages are wonky, and you're not in a position to fix them unless you're right there at the offending machine.

It's yahoo's fault, not the browser or codepage's.

The problem is that text can contain characters like quotes or html code that would break the page when displayed as is. When I use <a> in text, yahoo has to replace it with code that will display <a> but not act like it in an HMTL sense.

The apostrophe code is a misfiring of that mechanism. Yahoo translates a single quote into the safe html code to display an apostrophe, then accidentally translates the safe html code again into "even safer" code that will use html code to actually display the html code for an apostrophe.

The idea is to allow people to use codes like that in their posts (like you did), but usually there's a mechanism preventing the 2nd pass from misfiring, and it's still broken, like almost everything on yahoo (like the new mail counter, or the edit answer function).

I choose the answer that best answer's the question. Concise. Regardless of grammar because there are a lot of peeps on here that don't have the best of education but have a great heart and insight equal to those of us who were more fortunate in obtaining an education. If my question is one that warrants more opinion, I will choose a best answer based on a person's ability to state their argument with supporting opinion, documentation, etc so long as the answer is plausible. I ignore thumbs down and thumbs up totally. There are so many fly by nights in YA that have little points and little opinion who are here to be funny, mean, nasty, or just want points. It's comical at times to see the first 5 answer's sporting all "thumbs down" and then the sixth one has either a thumbs up or nothing. Following, all the answer's have a thumbs down. So obvious, don't you think? And personally, I feel that although grammar is important- for one to judge a person by their grammar and/or make mention of a person's grammar is rude. I have seen many a young person who's writing is atrocious and several YA peeps blast their grammar. I give a sincere answer and many times, these young people have contacted me via email to thank me for not judging and for giving them good advice. Thank you for the question and giving me an opportunity to relieve my irritation with those who try to manipulate the questioners opinion of whom is the best! Nana