a comment about magic quotes from the drupal LA group ( http://groups.drupal.org/node/227548#comment-745338) "
We are writing php code using AMP stacks locally. We I first tried to do an INSERT to the MySQL database for user input, it would error out because MySQL uses single quotes as well to define the start and end of the string values.
Turning on the magic_quotes_gpc setting in PHP places a backslash character in front of any single or double quote character in data retrieved from a form. The backslash character tells MySQL to treat the quote as part of the data and not part of the string delineator. The backslash isn't added to the data, it's silently stripped away when the data is stored in the table.
WAMP has this off by default as will PHP 5.4 according to the documentation. I'm told that PHP coders don't like relying on the magic_quotes_gpc setting, and instead prefer to handle the data themselves.
if (!get_magic_quotes_gpc()) { $title = addslashes($title); $author = addslashes($author);
}
Trouble is, you cannot use BOTH. They you get all kinds of double slashes, etc. and other crazy stuff going on. Combine that with WYSIWYG and it is a backslash tornado!
I don't know what the WYSIWYG editors or even Drupal does about this, but try turning off magic_quotes_gpc if you have access tothe PHP.ini or can override with .phprc file. "