MKDocs rendering apostrophes in Markdown as ’

Question

I am creating an MKDocs 1.4.3 (running on Python 3.11.2) static site with the MKDocs Material theme.

The strange thing is that apostrophes like ' are being rendered as ’ when I serve the rendered site locally with the mkdocs serve command.

For example, here's a snippet of my Markdown source:

## What is a container?

Let's consider the analogy of shipping containers that are used throughout the world.

This renders as:

Where you can see let's is shown as let’s.

Similarly, double quotes are rendered as “.

What might be causing this strange phenomenon and how do I fix it?

Thank you.