What is the history/heritage of the text in the Manual runner? Was it formatted (like HTML or Word with bullets, bold, tables, etc.)? Was it copy/pasted from email from Outlook?

That is likely the problem.

Various text windows/editors in QC have ''limited'' formatting capabilities.
Since it is one step in this case, I would try to delete the text on the step, and re-create it MANUALLY by typing in or minimal copy/paste after ''scrubbing'' with a paste first to Notepad (then copy to clipboard again for final paste).

Outlook for some reason (and formatted email in general) is often the blame for all kinds of ''bad characters'' or ''bad formatting'' in QC.

Please try re-working that step .