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A stray  is a broken space

Your text was saved as UTF-8 and read as Windows-1252. Paste it below and it's put right.

28 characters
Updates as you type
Correct text is left as it is

Show the steps
  1. Each garbled run was turned back into the bytes Windows-1252 showed, then read as UTF-8, as it should have been.
  2. Â[no-break space] → (no-break space) (U+00A0): bytes C2 A0
  3. £ → £ (U+00A3): bytes C2 A3
Printable chart

What  means

A stray  before a space is a broken non-breaking space, the invisible character that keeps two words on the same line. In UTF-8 it's C2 A0. Windows-1252 shows C2 as  and A0 as a space, so the space survives and a mysterious  appears in front of it.

WHY IT HAPPENS

Byte by byte

(no-break space) (U+00A0) in UTF-8, and what Windows-1252 makes of each byte
ByteIn UTF-8Windows-1252 shows
C2lead byte: 2 bytes in allÂ
A0continuation byte[no-break space]

Byte by bytestringmash.com/mojibake/stray-a-circumflex-nbsp

Where you probably saw it

Text copied from web pages, which use non-breaking spaces between numbers and units or around punctuation.

Prices, where £ (a broken £) often appears beside it.

Emails and documents that use non-breaking spaces for layout.

Related sequences

Text broken this way rarely has just one problem.  is a byte order mark, ’ is a broken apostrophe, é is a broken é. The mojibake fixer repairs all of them at once, and its table lists the rest.

Questions

Why is there an  before spaces in my text?

Those spaces are non-breaking spaces, C2 A0 in UTF-8. Read as Windows-1252, the C2 shows as Â.

What about £?

A broken £. The pound sign is C2 A3 in UTF-8, so it gets the same stray Â.

Can I turn the non-breaking spaces into normal ones?

Yes. Set No-break spaces to Make ordinary spaces.

Sources

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