The only explanation I can come up with for the sudden success on the old ver. is; when I opened the beta ver. first, there were no previous files list. I ran it through and closed the app. The second time I opened it, all the other previous files were now there to access. It had connected with the earlier non-working app somehow and after that the older ver. started to produce correct text and no encoding trouble. Maybe there was some kind of corruption in the old app that the new ver. fixed. Very weird. Some things in epub are just unexplainable.

btw I added the $%#& characters myself just to test

I was taught epub does not allow multiple returns. I think perhaps Pubcoder is becoming self-aware. It is evolving. (:^l

I edited the text in Pages on my Mac for this project. Just to be sure I copied to text edit and made it plain text and then put it in the PC project and exported. This time I purposely made multiple returns right after the first paragraph and then in between the 'a' in the first sentence on the second. Every time before if an extra carriage return or an extra space between characters is there, perhaps from sloppy copying or typing, I got an 'A' with a carrot over it. Always. I showed a doctor in Australia how to make books with Pubcoder and he was trying to space stuff out like an index or a table with returns and spaces. He sent me the file to check and there were 'A's everywhere. This time there is obvious spacing with no odd characters. I am at a loss.

Not sure how to interpret this but I exported from the previous version and now I'm having no problems. This doesn't make sense. Nothing has changed in my process of creation and export but now it's behaving. I have had this problem for several ebooks prior to this.

I can send you the html folder download from the online previewer if you like via dropbox. Otherwise here is a link to the test book on Kindle. You can always preview it on the store web page with the quick sample read.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXZ93DCB

This is how it looks on my Kindle Cloud Reader and it looks the same on my Kindle Fire. Perfect. I ran it through the book creator and put it on the store for .99 cents. Thought I could make it free but it said pick a price between .99 and up so I did that. If I had put it in the Select program I could have had a free book for five days but no matter. I'm thrilled this worked! Now I dont have to be nervous about text anymore! I can also edit in the program which always introduced errors no matter how careful I was. I had to edit outside the app. Thanks so much Angelo! I always extol the virtues of Pubcoder everywhere I talk about epub. It has made my book creation nearly effortless compared to the old work flows. I'm a customer for life.

I used several types of punctuation through out my text. All comes out correct.

Success! This is on the online Kindle Previewer which is supposed to be the definitive look at what will display in e-print. Now the second time I exported to epub3 I didn't get that warning on Pubcoder's validation for the declaration etc...
What is that about? I'll let you know if it comes up again. Oxygen Author doesn't seem to mind it, though I didnt read al those warnings it had. Mostly they are about extra fonts and other stuff that doesn't matter to validation.