title: SQL NVARCHAR(MAX) returning ASCII and Weird Characters instead of Text
body: <p>I have an SQL Table and I'm trying to return the values as a string.
  The values should be city names like Sydney, Melbourne, Port Maquarie etc.</p>
  
  <p>But When I run a select I either get black results or as detailed in the first picture some strange backwards L character. The column is an NVARCHAR(MAX)</p>
  
  <pre><code>SELECT ctGlobalName FROM Crm.Cities
  </code></pre>
  
  <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/pYDAt.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/pYDAt.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p>
  
  <p>Then I tried using MSSQL's Edit top 200 rows feature and I could see the names of the cities, but also all these weird ascii characters.</p>
  
  <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/vy0XJ.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/vy0XJ.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p>
  
  <p>Now I didn't create the database, I'm just running queries on it. Some things I've read have suggested it is a problem with the Collation. But the table is SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS which matches the server collation.</p>
  
  <p>I'm sure there must be something I can add to my select query to return the values as an ordinary string. Is there something I can do to my select query to return the expected format without the weird characters?</p>