To make "special" characters show up right - on these and many other boards - you have to write them up in html.
An e with a grave accent (an e from germany, perhaps) is written as "& e grave ;" minus the quotes and spaces : è
Similarly you write "& e acute ;" for é.
The bonus is you can then have some fun with it. If you remember that "uml" is the html abbreviation for umlaut, you can make some fünkÿ löökïng chäräctërs.