diff --git a/src/plugins/lib/libhtml.py b/src/plugins/lib/libhtml.py
index cd20776d0..7d774ffc2 100644
--- a/src/plugins/lib/libhtml.py
+++ b/src/plugins/lib/libhtml.py
@@ -104,46 +104,6 @@ _START_CLOSE = set([
     'param'
     ])
 
-_html_dbl_quotes = re.compile(r'([^"]*) " ([^"]*) " (.*)', re.VERBOSE)
-_html_sng_quotes = re.compile(r"([^']*) ' ([^']*) ' (.*)", re.VERBOSE)
-_html_replacement = {
-    "&"  : "&",
-    ">"  : ">",
-    "<"  : "&#60;",
-    "°"  : "",
-    }
-
-#------------------------------------------------------------------------
-# html_ecape function
-#-----------------------------------------------------------------------
-# This command then defines the 'html_escape' option for escaping
-# special characters for presentation in HTML based on the above list.
-def html_escape(text):
-    """Convert the text and replace some characters with a &# variant."""
-
-    # First single characters, no quotes
-    text = ''.join([_html_replacement.get(c, c) for c in text])
-
-    # Deal with double quotes.
-    while 1:
-        m = _html_dbl_quotes.match(text)
-        if not m:
-            break
-        text = m.group(1) + '&#8220;' + m.group(2) + '&#8221;' + m.group(3)
-    # Replace remaining double quotes.
-    text = text.replace('"', '&#34;')
-
-    # Deal with single quotes.
-    text = text.replace("'s ", '&#8217;s ')
-    while 1:
-        m = _html_sng_quotes.match(text)
-        if not m:
-            break
-        text = m.group(1) + '&#8216;' + m.group(2) + '&#8217;' + m.group(3)
-    # Replace remaining single quotes.
-    text = text.replace("'", '&#39;')
-
-    return text
 #------------------------------------------------------------------------
 #
 # Html class.
diff --git a/src/plugins/webreport/NarrativeWeb.py b/src/plugins/webreport/NarrativeWeb.py
index 69f265c8e..67f0ae4f0 100644
--- a/src/plugins/webreport/NarrativeWeb.py
+++ b/src/plugins/webreport/NarrativeWeb.py
@@ -103,8 +103,8 @@ from libhtmlconst import _CHARACTER_SETS, _CC, _COPY_OPTIONS
 # src/plugins/lib/libhtml.py
 from libhtml import Html
 
-#import the html_escape function
-from libhtml import html_escape as html_escape
+# ability to escape characters from html output
+from xml.sax.saxutils import escape as html_escape
 
 # import styled notes from
 # src/plugins/lib/libhtmlbackend.py