When I went to add a story to my Yahoo page the other day I was dismayed to find that my special characters and standard punctuation had been replaced wholesale by meaningless symbols.

Words of foreign origin–jalapeño, piñata, mañana, señor, naïveté, résumé, fiancée, passé–

Contractions—don’t, can’t, won’t, I’m, she’s, we’re, they’ll, you’ll–

Dialogue quotation marks–“Dorothy! Dorothy!” I said.

And quotes from classical English literature, like this one from Shakespeare –“Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st/Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade/ When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st.”–

All had been changed to:

jalapeño, piñata —, mañana–, señor, naïveté, résumé, passé ––

don’t, can’t, won’t, I’m, she’s, we’re, they’ll, you’ll � . .

�Dorothy! Dorothy!� I said

“Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st./ Nor shall death brag thou wandere’st in his shade/ When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st”

I trust that Yahoo will correct the glitch, or eliminate the virus.. Otherwise, years of my work and, I assume, that of other writers posting on Yahoo will be ruined.

“Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st.
Nor shall death brag thou wandere’st in his shade When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st”

This how it came out after Yahoo’s punctuation police butchered it.

“Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st. Nor shall death brag thou wandere’st in his shade When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st”

My message to Yahoo: Not all your customers need to be told how to punctuate. Not all of us are illiterate. Perhaps the folks who concocted your punctuation program should go back to school and get a real education.

Stumbled your post .. cheers

I’ve had the same problem as you before and the solution was given to enter the ad copy in the long description instead.

Now with the change I’m going to need to find another solution or keep complaining to Yahoo that the punctuation is a big pain to advertisers.