replace Microsoft characters with standard

I want to replace Microsoft's curly-quotes with regular html " straight-quotes for any incoming text submitted in a form. (And some other special-character replacements, too.) I know str_replace will do it. BUT - - - How do I find out the character hex values to replace? What IS that little curly-quote character? The "..." elipses character that MS Word creates? (which I want to convert back into 3 periods.) OR: Does PHP4 already have some brilliant function for just this kind of thing? Any advice appreciated.