Any way to stop the ?

Question

Greetings Brightspace Community,

I use Notepad and my Windows clipboard a lot when providing feedback to students. However, whenever I copy something I wrote in the D2L feedback section and paste it into Notepad (which is supposed to remove all formatting), it keeps pasting text I didn’t write, namely the 6 characters:

I know this is HTML code for “non-breaking space”, and that it occurs when I type two spaces (an old habit from before a single space after a period was the standard).  Is there any way - other than me changing my typing so I don't add two spaces after a period - to stop D2L from inserting that code when I copy from a text field?

I believe this started doing this to me around the summer of 2023. I assumed it was an update that changed the D2L text areas from plain text areas to HTML text areas, but that's just a theory.  Thanks in advance for any insight, and my apologies if the answer to this is obvious.

Janet.O.779 · Answer

Hey, James—I tried another test and discovered that if I paste from Brightspace to a Google Doc, there are no more 's showing up! It seems that if you paste from one html area to another html area, there's no "translation" of the extra spaces entailed. However, it did result in a different (visually smaller) font size when pasted from Google back into Brightspace. Toggling to html view allows me to see the formatting code introduced: HTML VIEW OF ORIGINAL TEXT TYPED IN BRIGHTSPACE

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SAME TEXT PASTED INTO GOOGLE DOC AND THEN COPY-PASTED FROM GOOGLE DOC BACK INTO BRIGHTSPACE

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James.R.233 · Answer

Excellent suggestion, Janet! Thank you so much for taking the time to reply here. I hadn't thought of the "replace" tool in Notepad. That's a workaround I'll try. Although I really do wish there was a way to eliminate the cause as opposed to treating the symptom!  :)

Have a wonderful evening!

Janet.O.779 · Answer

I was able to duplicate what you're describing.

I couldn't find a way to stop my clipboard from pasting the   into Notepad… but Notepad does have a "Replace" feature under the Edit menu that can be used to quickly remove the offending code when it occurs multiple times in a block of text. Perhaps that would be of use to you?