For example, suppose I want to put an en dash in my page title, like this:
Home – My Site
Is there any reason to use – over just putting the character – in my HTML file?
Asked
Active
Viewed 630 times
2
Nate
- 26,164
- 34
- 130
- 214
-
Depends on the character. If it's something super weird, you might run into issues. A simple dash, however, should not break anything. – Sumner Evans Apr 30 '15 at 00:04
-
1Possible duplicate of [When Should One Use HTML Entities](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/436615/when-should-one-use-html-entities) – Mogsdad Jan 14 '16 at 16:44
4 Answers
3
It is definitely needed if you want to render characters that will mess up the HTML parser (< and >, and the & itself).
If you set the character set to UTF-8, then you can use other raw UTF8 characters.
<meta charset='utf-8'>
However some older browsers don't understand this tag, so they might not render UTF-8 characters properly.
I also wanted to point out - HTML entities are sometimes used to tell the browser to render a concept, rather than a specific character. Some browsers prefer to render entities in a more readable way than a Unicode character, for example Lynx renders ™ as (tm) instead of ™
Jimmie Tyrrell
- 1,479
- 3
- 12
- 32
1
If you use the less than (<) or greater than (>) signs in your text, the browser might mix them with tags. W3Schools.com
The only other HTML entities I would probably ever use would be and & unless a specific issue came about.
Mogsdad
- 44,709
- 21
- 151
- 275
0
If an HTML entity exists for the character you want to use, you should use the HTML entity. That ensures it displays as intended.
user2182349
- 9,569
- 3
- 29
- 41
-1
yes. some browsers and operating systems don't like it when you use the actual entity as it is... occasionally when typing a dash on a Mac it will just scramble or look like a void square on a Windows machine. its just safer to use the entity :D
caustic
- 585
- 2
- 8
- 18