jquery - After trying to fix the weird characters that appear on my webpage, why does the tag seem to prevent javascript from working? -

jquery - After trying to fix the weird characters that appear on my webpage, why does the <meta> tag seem to prevent javascript from working? -

i looked how prevent weird characters like: 
 appearing where

<br>

is in html. <meta charset="utf-8"> answer. however, have set in, jquery/javascript code seems have disabled. animations have stopped, etc. when take tag out, starts work again.

how can prevent 
 without using meta tag, or better, how can prevent meta tag stopping javascript working? if need more info problem, please ask!

thanks lot.

javascript jquery html character-encoding meta-tags