There is a problem with the ask a question button.
In the includes.php, the line is:

$xxAskQue="#xf27a;   Ask A Question";

However. the "#xf27a;   Ask A Question becomes the subject line, with the nbsp and the #xf27a.

What is their purpose and can they be safely removed? It's really confusing on the email

That is a Font Awesome Unicode

Check to make sure you have the following stylesheet in your head section on every page.

<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/font-awesome/4.7.0/css/font-awesome.min.css">

You can search the cheatsheet on their website for what it is.

fa-commenting [#xf27a;]

https://fontawesome.com/v4/cheatsheet/

Patrick

yes, it's there on the products.php page. and I checked red several other pages as well.

And I checked the dreamweaver template project.dwt and its also there.

Check to make sure the "Ampersand" sign is present in front of the # sign.

$xxAskQue="&#xf27a;  Ask A Question";

Also in your includes file you should only use SINGLE quotes, NOT DOUBLE quotes.

It should like this:

$xxAskQue='&#xf27a;  Ask A Question';

Personally I like to use the question mark in front of the Ask a Question

$xxAskQue='&#xf059;  Ask a Question';

And use this one for Email a Friend.

$xxEmFrnd='&#xf0e0;  Email a Friend';

Further to what Patrick said, for the Email subject line, you will likely prefer to enter this in vsadmin\includes.php

$askaquestionsubject='Question about %pid% submitted by %name%';

Requires v7.4.8 released March 2022 (or later version)

Gary