� appears using character_limiter() with strip_tags() and utf-8 charset
� replacement character used to replace an unknown or unprintable characterin php usually we solve this issue using multibyte string functions .use mb_substr with strip tags like :
mb_substr( strip_tags($text) , 0,300 ,'UTF-8' );//or what ever your charset or you maybe modify the codeigniter function and use Multibyte String Functions .
UPDATE
function character_limiter($str, $n = 500, $end_char = '…'){ if (mb_strlen($str) < $n) { return $str; } $str = mb_ereg_replace("\s+", ' ', str_replace(array("\r\n", "\r", "\n"), ' ', $str)); if (mb_strlen($str) <= $n) { return $str; } $out = ""; foreach (explode(' ', trim($str)) as $val) { $out .= $val.' '; if (mb_strlen($out) >= $n) { $out = trim($out); return (mb_strlen($out) == mb_strlen($str)) ? $out : $out.$end_char; } }}