"

[Romeo]

I see it all the time now, this expression '& quot'. All of a sudden it's everywhere. Is it some new fashion? What does it even mean?

[Romeo]

Don't know what happened there. My question title is   '& quot'.

Anyway, another thing. Who originated it? Where the b*ll*cks did it come from?'

[bernardo]

It is caused by a gremlin in some computers.  Some people type " (quotation mark) but the computer changes it to & quot (and kwot) because it doesn't recognise it properly.  Similarly, you wrote & quot (and quot) but the computer changed it to " (quotation mark) because the computer thought that was what you meant.

[gen2]

You have discovered part of the answer yourself.  The phrase you are questioning is HTML code and means a quotation mark.  The parser program for this website has correctly recognised it and replaced it with a quotation mark.

When it appears in someone's post, it is not because they have typed it in or intentionally included it.  It is because we are all using different browsers and editors and some of them have compatibility problems and the reverse happens - the user types a quote mark, it gets translated into the expression you ask about, but then doesn't get correctly translated back again into the quote mark for display.

We all wish it didn't happen, none of us want it to happen and one day the AB Editor may get his team of dedicated monks to sort the problem once and for all.

[bernardo]

Why didn't it change my & quot to " ?

[gen2]

bernardo, I avoided using the phrase in my post because I was afraid it might get converted.  It seems that AnswerBank's software correctly handles it in the question title, but not in the body of the post.  I am just going to try it out with some brackets

<& quot>
[& quot]
(& quot)
{& quot}

[gen2]

No, it looks as if they are all ignored in the body of the post.  Another similar piece of code that often shows up in posts is the non-breaking space & nbsp.

[jacey]

nbsp?  not bloody spelling properly?