The first thing I did was to change the text color from #666 to #000. It is soooo much easier to read now. I don't understand why gray - and a pretty light shad

The first thing I did was to change the text color from #666 to #000. It is soooo much easier to read now. I don't understand why gray - and a pretty light shade even (666 is pretty far from 000) - has become the standard text color on (way too many) websites. None of my displays, from middlish quality laptop to Adobe color space 32 inch monitor, show that as even close to being the most readable text color. In addition, the page sets a font weight of 300, combined with the font used it ends up with a pretty thin font that looks grayish to begin with. By the way, what is this 
 character that's all over the text for me?