My b2evolution Version: Not Entered

Hello,
Everytime that an apostrophe, or parenthesis, is used in my b2evo blog [v1.10.3] it causes backslashes (in posts and in URLs). I uninstalled my old version of b2evo and installed this newer version to remedy the issue, but no such luck.
Any help would be greatly appreciated and I apologize if this is an already dealt with issue ... I searched the forum and DOCS and could not find a reference to this. Thank you!