Quotes, Double Quotes and Hidden Fields

I've created a form which contains about 12 textareas and text inputs. If a user inputs a string which contains a number of " and ' characters then things get messy when the input is displayed for preview and is posted in hidden fields for final posting. I kept finding that data was being lost when input strings contained these quotes and have resorted to the following: $contact_name = htmlentities(stripslashes($contact_name)); $contact_email = htmlentities(stripslashes($contact_email)); $contact_add = htmlentities(stripslashes($contact_add)); $contact_tel = htmlentities(stripslashes($contact_tel)); $contact_fax = htmlentities(stripslashes($contact_fax)); $url = htmlentities(stripslashes($url)); $comments = htmlentities(stripslashes($comments)); This seems very clumsy and probably unnecessary - is there a better way of doing this? Thanks Gareth