Microsoft Word likes converting single and double quotes into it’s so-called smart quotes representation, which can be annoying when you are trying to display the string on a device that doesn’t support smart quotes (the curly ones in case you were wondering). The easiest way to clean out these curly smart or fancy quotes is to run a simple search and replace on your string:
$text = "string containing Microsoft Smart Quotes...";
$chrs = array (chr(150), chr(147), chr(148), chr(146));
$repl = array ("-", """, """, "'");
$text = str_replace($chrs, $repl, $text);
And now you know.