Apple Mail space bar encodes as dagger symbol

Eggs2265 wrote:

I see it in original ... emails.

So you can produce the dagger when typing in an otherwise totally blank Mail New Message pane, without purposely making an nbsp via Option + Space?

In your Mail Settings > Composing, is it set to Rich Text or Plain Text? Whatever it is, try changing it to the other one.

I'm pretty sure no recipients see your daggers, because having the legacy MacRoman encoding used instead of Unicode is extremely strange.

Thanks! First thing to try is to open Font Book > Settings > Advanced and do Reset Fonts and then restart.

Could you post a screenshot of an actual incoming email where you see this? Also could you enlarge the font size so we can be sure of the exact character?

Can you copy/paste that character from your email into your post here in the forum? † is what you get with Option t, but yours looks taller.

If you use webmail via Safari instead of Mail, is it still there?

Thanks!

Am I right that you never see this dagger when you are typing a new original email which is not a response to an incoming?

I am thinking that this may be some kind of encoding problem what affects the nbsp character U+00A0 used in html mail for formatting purposes. If this character A0 gets read in the old MacRoman legacy (non-Unicode) encoding as it gets displayed as a dagger. As for how this could be happening in your Mail app I don't know yet.

Eggs2265 wrote:

It's even crazier than that actually.

It's so bizarre

Sounds like you need movie to demonstrate instead of a screen shot.

Is there any difference in behavior if you switch Mail > Settings > Compose between Rich Text and Plain Text?

Are you able to upgrade your machine to a more recent MacOS -- 13, 14, 15, or 26?

Have you tried booting in Safe Mode?

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/mac-help/mh21245/12.0/mac/12.0

Are you able to visit an Apple Store to have someone see this behavior first hand?

Please post a screenshot of what you are seeing.

Also verify what macOS version you are running. Your profile says it is from 5 years ago.

Thanks!

Can you copy/paste the symbol (plus the words before an after) from a new email message you are writing to here? That would be helpful

Instead of a screenshot, could you copy paste here an example of your typing in a Mail new message pane two words separated by one space where hitting the space key generated dagger instead of space?

Eggs2265 wrote:

The dagger is produced after any character by tapping on the space bar, including nbsp itself.

But in your screenshots I see lots or ordinary spaces with no dagger, and daggers only appear at certain places like the ends of sentences or lines or links. So whether pressing space will produce a dagger instead of a space depends on the location in your text body, right?

Eggs2265 wrote:

Doesn't change through upgrades

Have you actually verified the same behavior in 13, 14, 15, or 26?

I've been helping here a long time, but don't think I have ever seen another example of your problem, it probably belongs in a special museum of unsolved Mac mysteries.