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Character Entity References Are Your Friends

Posted January 02, 2008 @ 4:59 PM, by Marc, in HTML — 0

When you are writing content that will be visible on the Internet, be sure to use proper character entity references for common characters such as ampersands, double quotes, and more.

Below is a short list of examples to show you what I mean:

• When your goal is left and right double quotes, don’t use these characters (created by holding the Shift key and pressing the double quote key on common keyboards): " "
• Instead, type these characters: “ ”
• This is how they look in a browser: “ ”

• When your goal is an ellipsis, don’t use three periods: ...
• Instead, type these characters: …
• This is how it looks in a browser: …

• When your goal is to represent inches and feet or seconds and minutes, don’t use these characters: " '
• Instead, type these characters: ″ ′
• This is how they look in a browser: ″ ′

• When your goal is an ampersand don’t use only an ampersand by itself (created by holding the Shift key and pressing the 7 key on common keyboards): &
• Instead, type these characters: &
• This is how it looks in a browser: &

• When your goal is to write a less-than or greater-than sign, don’t use these characters by themselves: < >
• Instead, type these characters: < >
• This is how they look in a browser: < >

• When your goal is to write some common fractions, don’t type a number, then a forward slash followed by another number: 1/4 1/2 3/4
• Instead, type these characters: ¼ ½ ¾
• This is how they look in a browser: ¼ ½ ¾

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• Next: Accessible Table Markup Demonstration