PHP: converting html tags to line breaks in MySQL

hi guys,

i developed a php form that sends to email and save the info to a MySQL database at the same time.

The challenge I'm encountering is when special characters like "'" are included in one of the text areas, then I get a mysql syntax error.

I got a tip that I need to create a script that will strip the special characters.

Can anyone point me to the right direction? Thanks!