An article I always recommend on this topic: "The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Absolutely, Positively Must Know About Unicode and Character Sets (

An article I always recommend on this topic: "The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Absolutely, Positively Must Know About Unicode and Character Sets (No Excuses!)" by Joel Spolsky http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Unicode.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Unicode.html