If you're using UTF, then make sure your browser also uses Unicode, then maybe the issue will be solved. Also, don't edit your php files, remotely, in a notepad. I once did that, and my site got messed up, even though I just tried to edit some simple text in quotes, Then I edited it on the server, and there everything was fine.
Plain old Notepad has issues with the Byte Order Mark or whatever it's called, which is in UTF (though UTF-8 doesn't actually need a BOM but whatever). Most other editors are fine with it. Three things need ot match up: server HTTP header needs to be the same character encoding as the meta tag on the HTML page AND that HTML page needs to have been saved in the text editor with the SAME encoding (usually the editor will ask you if it's saving a new file). So, all three encodings must match : )