Hi,
am trying to insert an HTML character reference emdash '—' in a varchar2 column. When i try to read the data saved, its been replaced by a '?'. However, it doesn't happen to all the HTML character references since i see the data for '®' correctly. How do i save the data in order to view these special characters without getting substituted by '?'.

Thanks in advance
Nim

>How do i save the data in order to view these special characters without getting substituted by '?'.
Perhaps you are asking the wrong question.

One of 2 possible situations exist.
1) incorrect data is being stored in the DB.
2) incorrect data is being displayed/presented to the user/viewer.

SELECT ASCIISTR(field_in_question) from your_table;

modify line above then using CUT & PASTE post SQL & results back here

It was not an incorrect data. The HTML entity was part of an HTML code that needed to be saved in database. By the way it was not substituting '?' for all HTML entities(eg "&#174" but only for the character reference '&#8212'