Why do certain posts have " " in them?

[Jon_J]

In the "general" subforum I was reading this topic, it's a sticky:
Read This Before Posting!!!
http://www.1src.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10962&page=1&pp=15

Here are 2 lines pasted from the first post:
"or we can just keep  bumping it up"
"If you have a question...  check out the past few days threads."

I have seen this happen at other forums also.
Where do these " " come from?
Some sentences will have 4 or 5 occurrences of the above characters,  

It makes a post difficult to read. Is my browser doing this? I use Firefox 1.5

Thank you for reading this,
Jon

[kiteandcamera]

I see this frequently using IE. I suppose it is some type of HTML tag that gets lost in the translation from the actual post to what we actually see. Perhpas someone else can clear this up for us.

[dragonsgames]

It means space. As in the Space Bar. :D :cool:

[lesliefranke]

It means space. As in the Space Bar. :D :cool:

  is the HTML entity used to represent a non-breaking space. Basically, it is a standard space but tells the browser a line break should not occur at the point that the   occupies.

I am not sure how this would get into a post. My guess is that they come from cutting and pasting text into a message. Many WYSIWYG HTML editors (and other editors) will insert a   into a document to control layout and other issues.

[cbulock]

I fixed that post as it was annoying to read it like that. I notice there are other threads seem to have the same issue though. Not sure if it's an issue when the posts were entered in, or if there is some issue with the site that is causing that. I don't remember seeing the HTML in posts before, but I notice it more often recently.