forms - PHP - Escaping em dashes -

i $_post'ing following headline form:

google’s new partner android update initiative: promising — maybe; we’ll see 

and on handler page, if first thing

  echo "<pre>";   print_r($_post);   die(); 

i see:

google’s new partner android update initiative: promising — maybe; we’ll see 

i understand there functions convert & escape characters , html equivalents, how can ensure content added $_post in correct encoding?

cheers,

not sure if helps, seems utf-8 encoding got mixed (control characters seem familiar me ...). try output utf8_encode() or utf8_decode().