I haven't noticed question marks like that and didn't have a clue about "character encoding" so went searching after reading Zuzu's post and see that mine is listed as text encoding and it's set on default whatever that means. It's the first at the top of the list with a check mark next to the word Default, next says Western (ISO Latin I) and then Western (Mac OS Roman).
LOL, I thought I'd play around and change it to see what happens but I guess I better leave it alone or I might really mess things up and then have to have someone tell me how to get back to where it should be.