CODEWITHSUNDEEP
htmlcharacter-encodinghtml-entities
Incognito
Incognito

Reputation: 20765

HTML and character encoding vs HTML Entity

When writing an HTML document, is it acceptable to use the direct special character such as the captial letter C with a cedilla underneath as regular text: Ç or to use the HTML Entity name of this charecter, &Ccedil ?

I have seen both being used in practice, but surely there are rules governing the appropriate usage of this, as well as advantages to one way over another. For instance, this website maintains the raw-form of this character, but other websites may end up rendering it as a square block.

Upvotes: 4

Views: 5411

Answers (3)

Michael Irigoyen
Michael Irigoyen

Reputation: 22947

It all depends on the character encoding of the document. If you're unsure of whether or not you should use the the regular text or the encoding version, you could run your page through the W3C Validator.

Consider this code:

<html>
<head>
  <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
  <title>Stuff</title>
</head>
<body>
 <p>©</p>
 <p>&#169;</p>
</body>
</html>

The document encoding is set to UTF-8 and when it's validated, it returns an error:

Sorry, I am unable to validate this document because on line 7 it contained one or more bytes that I cannot interpret as utf-8 (in other words, the bytes found are not valid values in the specified Character Encoding). Please check both the content of the file and the character encoding indication.

Upvotes: 2

Quentin
Quentin

Reputation: 943571

Real characters:

  • Are easier to type if your system is set up for a language that uses those characters
  • Produce more readable code
  • Save bytes

HTML entities:

  • Let you more or less forget about character encoding

Obviously, characters with special meaning in HTML (<, &, etc) still need to be represented by entities.

Upvotes: 9

Spudley
Spudley

Reputation: 168685

If you're using UTF-8 character encoding, then most entity characters (other than &amp;, &gt; and &lt;) become redundant.

If you're not using UTF-8, then you need entities for everything.

Upvotes: 4

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