diff --git a/lib/tasks/populate.thor b/lib/tasks/populate.thor
index 3aa40e3399d..50087729f86 100644
--- a/lib/tasks/populate.thor
+++ b/lib/tasks/populate.thor
@@ -102,11 +102,13 @@ class Populate < Thor
   end
 
   def generate_sentence(num_words)
-    hipster_words.sample(num_words).join(' ').capitalize + '.'
+    sentence = hipster_words.sample(num_words).join(' ').capitalize + '.'
+    sentence.force_encoding('UTF-8')
   end
 
   def generate_email
-    hipster_words.sample.delete(' ') + '@' + hipster_words.sample.delete(' ') + '.com'
+    email = hipster_words.sample.delete(' ') + '@' + hipster_words.sample.delete(' ') + '.com'
+    email.delete("'").force_encoding('UTF-8')
   end
 
   def image_posts