What's with the symbols in titles?

[Scargod]

http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/5503... This title starts with a check mark.
Is this something the OP added or did Chow do it cuz it's special?
Are we into something new?

[Scargod]

I was doing search combinations using it and it is workable, but not very conducive to easy searching. I'm against it! Ba humbug! Next thing you know there will be colored letters, weird fonts and pictures!

[Jacquilynne]

Somebody just inserted a unicode character into their post from the looks of it.

[ChinoWayne]

No doubt some "Smart Alec" with t☺☺ much time on his hands.

[alanbarnes]

So how come titles can handle unicode characters but not ampersands?

[Caitlin McGrath]

It seems as if ampersands in titles post correctly around 60% of the time. (Note, that's a wild guess, based on the sample I've noticed over time.)

[rworange]

Many of the ampersands are in posts from before the site converted. The conversion didn't handle special characters elegantly.

If you do not edit the title, the all is well. If you edit it, then the ampersand gets converted. You just need to be sure to fix that during the edit.

This is something than be fixed because when that happened in Places it was fixed. I guess fixing it in chowhound topics isn't a big priority or a ticket has never been submitted because it isn't considered a problem despite being reported in the past.