Character encoding is a system that tells a computer how to interpret the raw bytes of a text file into readable characters. If a file is saved with one encoding (like WINDOWS-1252) and opened with another (like UTF-8), characters can appear corrupted. This tool standardizes your file to UTF-8, which is the most widely accepted standard.

This is a classic symptom of an encoding mismatch, often called 'mojibake'. It happens when a file is saved in one encoding but read as if it were in another. For example, a character like 'é' might be stored as one byte in an old encoding but interpreted as two different, incorrect characters in UTF-8. Our tool fixes this by correctly reading the original encoding and converting it properly.