Garbled text

Recently I have had garbled text in a few of my apps.
This manly appears in Safari, Firefox and Mail.
Some of the text appears as what looks like numeric fractions.

If I copy/paste the garbled text to another app it becomes readable.

Does anybody know a remedy for this?
It it a corrupt font somewhere?


I hope this link work so you can see pics of what I mean:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/28700446@N08/sets/72157607548205142/

Yes this is a bad font or perhaps you have deleted the required system font. I remember back an it use to be Helvetica Fractions I believe that caused it but that was a few years ago. Also make sure you are using the Apple installed Helvetica dfont.

I would bet an Archive and Install would fix this as it would reinstall the OS and the fonts.

try fixing permissions first... then removing preference files. zap the pram.