When I type a special character such as an em-dash in design view, it is encoded as [ampersand]mdash; yet when I select it from the insert special charcter menu it is encoded as [ampersand]#8212;

Is there any way to make DW always encode special characters as numeric entities (including when I cut and paste text from Word)?

check out the em dash file in the configuration folder.

ProgramFiles/Macromedia/DreamweaverMX2004/Configuration/Objects/Characters/Em-Dash.htm

it encodes differently due to validating the html.

** make sure you back up this file before you modify it **

you may also need to look at the characters.js file too.

Regards,
Dave

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