Rowan asked about getting email with strange characters. The little boxes are almost certainly Tabs.
The most likely thing Rowan is that someone wrote a letter in a word processor and did a copy and paste into the email client. The word processor has all sorts of special formatting and instructions for the screen reader and the printer, and these may be causing trouble in the email client. Have you tried looking at the raw view? If you flick on of those letters to me I'd be interested to see what you are talking about. John
