What è means
è is a broken è (è): your text was saved as UTF-8 but read as Windows-1252. It's è, the e with a grave accent, as in crème, très and pièce. Its UTF-8 bytes are C3 A8, and Windows-1252 shows them as à and ¨, a stray diaeresis that's easy to mistake for dust on the screen.
Byte by byte
| Byte | In UTF-8 | Windows-1252 shows |
|---|---|---|
| C3 | lead byte: 2 bytes in all | Ã |
| A8 | continuation byte | ¨ |
Byte by bytestringmash.com/mojibake/broken-e-grave
Where you probably saw it
French and Italian text, menus and recipes, where è is common.
Names such as Hélène or Agnès in forms and contact lists.
Subtitles and translation files saved in one encoding and loaded in another.
Related sequences
Text broken this way rarely has just one problem. é is a broken é, á is a broken á, ñ is a broken ñ. The mojibake fixer repairs all of them at once, and its table lists the rest.
Questions
What does è mean?
It's a broken è: the UTF-8 bytes C3 A8 read as Windows-1252.
What's the ¨ in it?
Byte A8 is a lone diaeresis, ¨, in Windows-1252 and Latin-1.
Does the fixer handle a whole French paragraph?
Yes. Every broken accent is fixed in one go, and correct letters are left alone.
Sources
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