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**Category:** About This Message Board\
**Created:** [September 29, 2001, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-helpful-note-about-special-characters-html-characters/84498 "2001-09-29T17:53:02Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 20\
**Page:** 2
**Author:**  [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\
**Post date:** [September 30, 2001, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-helpful-note-about-special-characters-html-characters/84498/21 "2001-09-30T00:49:02Z")
This is—I must say—a fine day for **erislover**. 😉
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**Author:**  [@warmgun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/warmgun)\
**Post date:** [September 30, 2001, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-helpful-note-about-special-characters-html-characters/84498/22 "2001-09-30T00:53:01Z")
©
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**Author:**  [@atypicalcarl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/atypicalcarl)\
**Post date:** [September 30, 2001, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-helpful-note-about-special-characters-html-characters/84498/23 "2001-09-30T01:03:44Z")
¿Whammo™
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**Author:**  [@waterj2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/waterj2)\
**Post date:** [September 30, 2001, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-helpful-note-about-special-characters-html-characters/84498/24 "2001-09-30T01:50:20Z")
— — the M-dash.
Also
– – the N-dash.
Use the n-dash for “through” as in 1996–2001. Also for connecting hyphenated words.
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**Author:**  [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\
**Post date:** [September 30, 2001, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-helpful-note-about-special-characters-html-characters/84498/25 "2001-09-30T02:01:31Z")
Lovely, **waterj2**. Now to knock off the trademark (not registered) and I will be complete.
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**Author:**  [@waterj2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/waterj2)\
**Post date:** [September 30, 2001, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-helpful-note-about-special-characters-html-characters/84498/26 "2001-09-30T02:07:30Z")
Also, though not supported by older browsers, let’s not forget
€ € the euro symbol
™ ™ the trademark symbol
√ √ square root symbol
∞ ∞ infinity symbol
∫ ∫ integral symbol
Here’s the complete list of what the HTML 4.0 standard does/will support: [http://www.hclrss.demon.co.uk/demos/ent4\_frame.html](http://www.hclrss.demon.co.uk/demos/ent4_frame.html) . I think it includes all unicode characters by number as well, IIRC.
Also, I think «these» are French, not German. The Germans have different quote marks.
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**Author:**  [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\
**Post date:** [September 30, 2001, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-helpful-note-about-special-characters-html-characters/84498/27 "2001-09-30T02:07:43Z")
Hmm, seems there was some mucking about up in my character sheet above.
" is &\*\*quot; not &**quote;
¿ is &i**quest; not &\*\*quest;
And, finally, the reason not having a “;” at the end isn’t strictly necessary is because browsers are generaly very forgiving with HTML. Using the semicolon at the end is certainly well-formed.
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**Author:**  [@waterj2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/waterj2)\
**Post date:** [September 30, 2001, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-helpful-note-about-special-characters-html-characters/84498/28 "2001-09-30T02:09:51Z")
I swear to God, those looked fine when I previewed (in the text area at least). vB is wierd. Trying again.
ã ã square root symbol
‡ ‡ infinity symbol
ç ç integral symbol
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**Author:**  [@waterj2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/waterj2)\
**Post date:** [September 30, 2001, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-helpful-note-about-special-characters-html-characters/84498/29 "2001-09-30T02:11:18Z")
OK, the board chokes on Unicode. For me at least. YMMV. Grrrr…
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**Author:**  [@atypicalcarl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/atypicalcarl)\
**Post date:** [September 30, 2001, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-helpful-note-about-special-characters-html-characters/84498/30 "2001-09-30T02:34:43Z")
I’ve been using the numeric codes. This [site](http://lorenz.mur.csu.edu.au/~lbenton/iso8859-1.html) says that they are compatible with all browsers.
Don’t know if it’s true or not, but they do have the ™ symbol. 🙂
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**Author:**  [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\
**Post date:** [September 30, 2001, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-helpful-note-about-special-characters-html-characters/84498/31 "2001-09-30T02:47:17Z")
Thought I would join you in your dismay, **waterj**. My browser won’t even display the infinity symbol in regular HTML, but my text-editor recognizes it as an acceptable ampersand sequence. _sigh_ Doesn’t seem to matter what I set the encoding to. ☹
Damn, an integral signal would rule in those messy physics GQs… and then I could tell my calculus limerick!!! Alas, the world remains imperfect no matter how hard I or others try. Strange 😉
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**Author:**  [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\
**Post date:** [September 30, 2001, 5:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-helpful-note-about-special-characters-html-characters/84498/32 "2001-09-30T05:01:56Z")
Just downloaded IE6.0 and it doesn’t display the characters either.
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**Author:**  [@beegirl13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beegirl13)\
**Post date:** [September 30, 2001, 5:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-helpful-note-about-special-characters-html-characters/84498/33 "2001-09-30T05:42:04Z")
Another trick that I use to make symbols easier is to go to keyboard settings and set my keyboard to “international”. Now I can get many of the more common symbols by typing ctrl+alt+letter. For example,ctrl+alt+r produces ®. It can’t be used for everything, but it gives me what I need to use the most.
¡²³¤¼½¾äåé®þüúíóöáßðøæ©ñµç¿»«¬×¥ 🙂
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**Author:**  [@annalamerino](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/annalamerino)\
**Post date:** [September 30, 2001, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-helpful-note-about-special-characters-html-characters/84498/34 "2001-09-30T17:17:06Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by RedFury \*
> \*\*Like you said, guys. Whatever works for you. Personally, I find it very easy to open the character map – no need to memorize anything. Which at my age is certainly an advantage.
>
> Matter of fact, I have this free proggie [**extended character map**](http://aritechdev.hypermart.net/ecm.htm) that includes more combinations than I’ll ever need… \*\*
Thanks! That thing is great! I always wanted to check multiple fonts for particular things, like where you can see what characters are NOT in a particular font (the little boxes). Too many fonts have no “Euro” symbol yet, for example.
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**Author:**  [@Achernar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Achernar)\
**Post date:** [October 1, 2001, 6:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-helpful-note-about-special-characters-html-characters/84498/35 "2001-10-01T06:07:47Z")
What’s up?
What’s up?
What’s up?
&achernar;
Fun-ny.
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**Author:**  [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\
**Post date:** [October 1, 2001, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-helpful-note-about-special-characters-html-characters/84498/36 "2001-10-01T13:40:17Z")
psst—you’ll note in the OP that &\*\*nbsp; is ignored 🙂
¤¤¤For those of you who are still wondering, it won’t work in the “subject” text box. ☹ ¤¤¤
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**Author:**  [@snopester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snopester)\
**Post date:** [October 1, 2001, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-helpful-note-about-special-characters-html-characters/84498/37 "2001-10-01T13:52:40Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by erislover \*
> \*\*psst—you’ll note in the OP that & **nbsp; is ignored 🙂**
WHY???
(nonbreaking space) is one of the more important character entities — it encodes a nonbreaking space, which (on web pages, including web bulletin boards) is the only way to get the correct two spaces between sentences, short of using a {pre} block.
Another important one which is mangled by this software is — (em-dash).
I encoded an em-dash above using [Alt][1][5][1], but characters 128-159 are not valid ISO-8859-x (they’re the Windows-1xxx extension), hence an em-dash done this way will probably not render correctly on Mac or Linux browsers.
I repeat: Give me UBB any day…
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**Author:**  [@Achernar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Achernar)\
**Post date:** [October 1, 2001, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-helpful-note-about-special-characters-html-characters/84498/38 "2001-10-01T15:14:50Z")
“psst?you’ll note in the OP that is ignored :)”
Yeah, I know. Thanks. 🙂 I knew that it was not turned into a non-breaking space; I wanted to know, though, if it was ignored as in deleted, or ignored as in left in. And I see that if you Preview, it does one, but if you Submit, it does another. This is exactly the kind of thing I don’t want to trip up on when the time comes.
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**Author:**  [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\
**Post date:** [October 1, 2001, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-helpful-note-about-special-characters-html-characters/84498/39 "2001-10-01T15:19:37Z")
> [@](#):
>
> This is much more helpful than remembering the Alt+xxxx codes
But still ever so much klunkier than remembering the Macintosh option+key codes, which are more intuitive than either of the other two.
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**Author:**  [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\
**Post date:** [October 1, 2001, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-helpful-note-about-special-characters-html-characters/84498/40 "2001-10-01T18:29:04Z")
You’ll see I used one above by using the &\*\*mdash; syntax, which is HTML syntax. Are you saying it doesn’t properly display on your browser?
Also, I get the em dash with Alt+ **0** 151. The zero is crucial.
The only other numerical one I remember is Alt+998, which displays the mu character (µ).
**AHunter** , Macs be damned! Well, I dunno, really. Never used one. 😉 Can you give me an example of how they are more intuitive than mnemonic devices (the ampersand syntax given above)?
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