How do I convert Word smart quotes and em dashes in a string?

Question

I have a form with a textarea. Users enter a block of text which is stored in a database.

Occasionally a user will paste text from Word containing smart quotes or em

Answer 1

Actually the problem is not happening in PHP but it is happening in JavaScript, it is due to copy/paste from Word, so you need to solve your problem in JavaScript before you pass your text to PHP, Please see this answer https://stackoverflow.com/a/6219023/1857295.