title: MYSQL data type for long description, special characters
body: <p>I have a long description field in a products table with a data type: text. The collation is latin1_swedish_ci for reference.</p>
  
  <p>For products in my database I need a superscript 2, bullet points for a list and line breaks. For example when the bullet points output on the page they output as:</p>
  
  <p>â€¢</p>
  
  <p>Is there any way round this so i can display my long description correctly with line breaks too?</p>
  
  <pre><code>$product = $this-&gt;MProducts-&gt;getProduct($id);
  $data['product'] = $product;
  
  &lt;?php echo "&lt;p style='clear:both; padding-top:10px;'&gt;".$product['longdesc']."&lt;/p&gt;";?&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Regards,</p>