Why can't I submit my question on Stack Overflow?

For others who have this question, there is also the possibility that you've typed a string of characters that Stack Exchange rejects.

For example, this file header data:

If attempting to edit an existing post you will most likely see an error:

If posting for the first time you may not see any indication of why you can't proceed.

Usually enclosing characters in backticks is enough to let Stack Exchange know not to try to interpret a string of text. But apparently there are exceptions where backticks don't work.

Solutions / Workarounds

1. Of course you can post your string as a screenshot, as I have done above.
2. If the string needs to be selectable text, you can try using HTML entities, and sharing inside a Snippet.

Below is an example that uses a Snippet to display the entities ⠉ and ͜. When you run it, you will see a "smiley" made up of the two glyphs. These glyphs can be selected, and copied to your clipboard.

div.smile {
   line-height: 0;
   font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
   font-size: 32px;
   color: orange;
   padding: 16px;
}

<div class="smile">
&#10249;<br>
&#860;
</div>

^{Disclaimer: I make no promises as to whether any given glyph will work, because it's impossible to know. (I didn't write the code for Stack Exchange.) But I don't see any reason for it not to work, and it's the most logical thing to try. Cross-browser (and in this case cross-platform) compatibility is, after all, one of the purposes of HTML entities.}

You can look up HTML entities using a search tool such as this one.

^{Note that the Snippets feature is not enabled for all Stack Exchange sites. But I imagine if you're dealing with code, you are probably trying to post to a site where the feature is available. Of course, it is available on Stack Overflow.}