title: Em Dash Handling difference between php and rails
body: <p>I am migrating an app from php to rails, and am facing some issues in the display of em-dash.
  I am displaying a field which according to phpmyadmin and rails console, has the value of "Mon,Tue &amp; Thu: 8 a.m. â€“ 12 a.m." where the â€“ is supposed to be an em-dash (the long dash). Not sure why it is stored this way to begin with..</p>
  
  <p>In php I display with <code>&lt;td&gt;&lt;b&gt;Opening Hours&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;?= nl2br($bar['opening_hours']) ?&gt;&lt;/td&gt;</code>
  and this renders to <code>Mon,Tue &amp; Thu: 8 a.m. – 12 a.m.</code></p>
  
  <p>In rails I display this with <code>= simple_format(@venue.opening_hours, style: "margin-bottom: 0px;")</code> in slim. This however just renders to <code>Mon,Tue &amp; Thu: 8 a.m. â€“ 12 a.m.</code></p>
  
  <p>Does anyone have any idea why this happens to begin with and how come php overcomes it? I tried <code>echo nl2br("Mon,Tue &amp; Thu: 8 a.m. â€“ 12 a.m.");</code> on <a href="http://phpepl.cloudcontrolled.com/" rel="nofollow">http://phpepl.cloudcontrolled.com/</a> and it just printed it as is..</p>
  
  <p>edit: outputing to <code>error_log</code> gets me <code>Mon,Tue &amp; Thu: 8 a.m. \xe2\x80\x93 12 a.m.</code></p>