Erm...do you hate it when people who have no idea what these things mean (ie me) just use a - for anything that needs hyphenating or separating, and using ' and ' for emphasising (never ever using `, because it's too far out of normal typing range on my keyboard)

In email, or on this BBS (i.e. when one can't do any better), then of course the annoyance centres on the ISO8859-1 committee or on the BBS software rather than the user...

On web sites or printed stuff, I actually think it damages the message if the typesetting is bad... it's a bit like MP3 compression artefacts: if you don't know what you're listening for, they you might never hear them, but once you do know what to listen for, even the smallest mistake irritates you...

Peter