Unable to display UK Pound sign in tagline

This is a new install of zc 1.5.3.

I've checked configure.php and english.php and both are set to UTF-8
The MySQL server and databases are set to UTF-8 and were created from scratch using this install of zencart.

I wish to have a UK pound sign £ in my tagline so I've changed my header.php thus:

define('HEADER_SALES_TEXT', '<br/>"Free Shipping over £100"<br/><br/>');

Instead of the pound sign I see a solid diamond with a "?" inside. I've read every post that seems to be relevant and I really don't know what to try.

Very new to Zen ...so much to learn.

Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Not sure how to advise, but it works for me on a bone-stock 1.5.3 installation: http://www,stevesh.com/demo

That diamond is usually caused by character set mismatches, so I would double-check that first.

stevesh:

Not sure how to advise, but it works for me on a bone-stock 1.5.3 installation: http://www,stevesh.com/demo

That diamond is usually caused by character set mismatches, so I would double-check that first.

Thanks Steve,

I've checked english.php:
"// charset for web pages and emails
define('CHARSET', 'utf-8');

I decided to look at the source for the rendered page. it seem that I'm missing the charset declaration viz.
**<meta charset="UTF-8">
**

The only reference to charset is in the content meta tag
**<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
**

Using the Dev Toolkit the most likely candidate responsible looks like it might be html_header.php. Seems I'm going to have to trace through the logic so a pointer in the right direction might save me a step or two.

You can temporarily change to the "Classic" template to see if the issue is template-specific.

lat9:

You can temporarily change to the "Classic" template to see if the issue is template-specific.
Hi lat9,

Brilliant! The best ideas are the simplest. The Classic template worked and led to the answer which was in plain sight:
define('HEADER_SALES_TEXT', '<br/>"Free Shipping over £100"<br/><br/>');

Yup, I used plain quotation marks. Lesson learned.

Thanks all!

CS