gremlins

The mysterious characters that sometimes appear on your computer screen, often in text documents and sometimes in code or e-mail messages, like this â€. Another example is the replacement character you see often � the question mark inside a diamond.

Gremlins often appear when you copy the contents of a file from one program to another by highlighting the text with your cursor and then cutting-and-pasting; strange boxes or symbols may appear in the white space. At that point, you have to figure out another way to transfer the information (often using Notepad or Text Edit) or you have to go through and delete the bad characters, all the while muttering, "Darn gremlins."