encoding - How to convert a string from utf8 to ASCII (single byte) in c#? - Stack Overflow:
ASCIIEncoding ascii = new ASCIIEncoding(); 
byte[] byteArray = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(sOriginal); 
byte[] asciiArray = Encoding.Convert(Encoding.UTF8, Encoding.ASCII, byteArray); 
string finalString = ascii.GetString(asciiArray);

Apparently still has trouble with emdashes and "fancy" colons and quotes, etc.

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