On the theme of things which I am shocked have not already been created, I lately took it upon myself to write an application for automatically fixing Microsoft "Smart Quotes". This utility sits in your system tray and replaces these troublesome characters (‘ ” … etc) with a more web-appropriate version before they get anywhere near your webpages.
It is configurable in various ways and should be an invaluable timesaver for any publisher, copywriter, web developer or person working with internet content. More information can be found here.