Letter "I" appears as 'A ?'

I am on my iPhone 7 plus with iOS 11.1 (issue started on the previous version 11.0.3 and continued after updating to 11.1) and this afternoon started noticing a capital 'A' followed by a question mark in a box appear in my predictive text field. It seems to be associated with me typing the letter 'I' or 'i' on my keyboard. While in iMessage it does not translate the letter "i" into the symbol in the message, in all 3rd party apps (GroupMe, Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram...) it will not in fact let me type the letter "I" or 'i' (capitalization doesn't appear to matter), but instead inputs the 'A' and the question mark in a box as if the two are one symbol. I have restarted my phone, reset my dictionary all to no avail. I have the English (US QWERTY) keyboard, Emojis, and Bitmoji keyboard installed. I do not have that symbol in my text replacements. The only thing that seems to have gotten rid of it is by turning "auto correct" off. As soon as I turn it back on, the symbol is back and my letter 'i' is useless in apps again. Help--this is so annoying!!!