At the top of the DTDonate form I see:  Use this form to make an online donation. If this is for something specific, please note that in the comment box. How do I modify this and add text and images, etc to the top of form?
First of all, make sure you have the latest 2.1.2 version of DT Donate. With that extra character I'm seeing in what you copied, I think you may be using an older version... To modify the text above the form, go to Settings. Locate the textarea box labeled "Message and/or Instructions to display above the donation form:" You'll see the message there. You can edit there. You CAN use HTML in this box so you could pull an image in that way if you wanted.
hmmm... odd that hardly anyone sees these. When it happened before, the PHP file only showed the special characters in certain text editors. Open up /components/com_dtdonate/dtdonate.php and look at the very first line of code. If you see the characters, remove them, save the file and upload the modified file back to the server. If you do not see them, try a different text viewer.
This was corrected and noted in another post. Please download the component again from within your account and you'll find the extra characters to be gone. Thanks.