> From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>
> To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> Date: 01/09/2011 09:24 AM
> Subject: Re: how to scan file for non-ascii chars (eg cut-n-paste 
> from ms-word)
> Sent by: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+kgold=watson.ibm.com@gnu.org
> 
> > From: dkcombs@panix.com (David Combs)
> > Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help
> > Date: 8 Jan 2011 19:53:01 -0500
> > 
> > When I 'cut-n-paste' from eg ms-word-produced document, into an
> > emacs buffer (ie ascii), you get all kinds of "non-ascii" chars,
> > eg left and right double-quotes, like these:
> > 
> > 
> > Char: . (8221, #o20035, #x201d) point=250 of 4096 (6%) column=7
> > Char: . (8220, #o20034, #x201c) point=218 of 4096 (5%) column=42
> > 
> > 
> > accents, and so on.
> > 
> > When I go to save the buffer, emacs will ask if I want to
> > save it in eg japanese format.  Not exactly what I want.
> 
> Doesn't it suggest utf-8 as one of the possible encodings?  If so, why
> not use utf-8 and leave these characters in the file?
> 

I've seen the same issue.  If I'm writing source code, I want plain ASCII,
nothing unusual that a compiler or linker might complain about.

> > What I'd like to do is change those "strange" characters
> > to their plain-ascii "equivalent", so to speak.  Like
> > '"' for double quote (left OR right), etc.
> 
> Not sure why would you want that, but doesn't M-% solve this problem
> nicely?  If not, why not?

query-replace works once one has found the non-ASCII character.  However,
it's often not obvious where the offending text is.

Is there a way to search for anything that isn't ASCII?