Those are accented characters. Since there's only two of them, the game probably assumes that if the font character is in a certain range, it should print one of the symbols.
Or some other NES games treat the accent mark as a seperate symbol, and automatically print it above the preceding (or following) character when it's found.

I hadn't really worked on this for ages.  I've always wanted to go back and make it...you know...good. 

Anyway, random stuff.  I know 4E is a stored number for stuff like how much items cost in the store and all that good stuff for stats.  I think it was 7B which put the " above the characters (sorry, the actual name for the stuff is escaping me at the moment.)  Some script starts at $5A3C.  Battle text starts around $AFD6 aaaand ends around $B155 with some text about how much experience and gold you got after a battle.  Looks like $B1F5 is the start of the monster name list and ends at $B435.  There's more script at $11CAF which starts off with the begining of the story mode.

None of it was really compressed or anything.  My skills realy aren't that great.  I'm sure my...8 year old patch of the game will explain that.

Anyway, looking this up sucked up todays free time.  My job now beckons.  I hope it'll clear some things up when looking at those locations and you'll be able to find stuff easier and do a good job on it.  I still do enjoy the game and would like to see it done.