Why are Chinese characters appearing in Apple Mail for some users?
Summary
What email marketers say7Marketer opinions
Email marketer from StackExchange explains that you need to ensure that you're saving your files as UTF-8, and that your email client is sending with UTF-8 headers. Sometimes, older systems default to other encodings like ISO-8859-1.
Email marketer from Mailchimp explains that selecting the correct language and character encoding in Mailchimp helps ensure content displays properly in different email clients. Always preview and test your campaigns before sending.
Email marketer from Campaign Monitor recommends using UTF-8 for email encoding, properly declaring it in headers, and testing emails across clients. Some clients are more sensitive to encoding issues.
Email marketer from Litmus recommends testing emails with various clients, including Apple Mail, to identify encoding or rendering issues. Apple Mail is known to be strict with character encoding.
Email marketer from Stack Overflow explains that this can be due to incorrect character encoding declaration in the HTML header, where the actual content is UTF-8, but the header specifies ISO-8859-1 or another incompatible encoding.
Email marketer from Reddit shares that it’s likely an encoding problem if Chinese characters show up unexpectedly; Ensure your email template and the email header specify UTF-8 encoding.
Email marketer from Email on Acid recommends verifying the email's character set, including the Content-Type header, and ensuring it matches the actual content encoding to prevent display issues in Apple Mail.
What the experts say5Expert opinions
Expert from Email Geeks explains to check if there's a different encoding in the MIME type, as multiple encodings can lead to unexpected results.
Expert from Email Geeks suggests checking the content type encoding first when encountering character encoding issues.
Expert from Email Geeks explains that Apple Mail is more sensitive to misconfigured character encoding metadata than other clients like Gmail, which often attempts to guess the correct encoding. This is why the problem is more frequently observed with Apple recipients.
Expert from Email Geeks shares that the issue is likely due to a mismatch between the character set used in the content and the character set declared in the email headers or HTML metadata. For example, ISO-8859-1 content with UTF-8 metadata.
Expert from Word to the Wise explains that the issue often stems from a character set mismatch. The email content may be encoded in one character set (e.g., ISO-8859-1), while the email headers or HTML metadata declare a different one (e.g., UTF-8). Apple Mail is more sensitive to these inconsistencies than some other email clients.
What the documentation says3Technical articles
Documentation from Sendgrid states that if you're experiencing issues with character encoding, ensure that your content is UTF-8 encoded and that your email headers correctly declare this encoding. Double-check your template and code for inconsistencies.
Documentation from IETF explains that MIME standards require correct character set labeling to ensure proper rendering across different email clients; incorrect or missing labels can cause misinterpretation, especially in clients like Apple Mail that strictly adhere to these standards.
Documentation from W3C explains that character encoding should be declared correctly to prevent display errors. The character encoding specified in the HTTP headers or META elements must match the actual encoding of the document.