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**Category:** About This Message Board\
**Created:** [January 14, 2004, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/testing-html-character-entities/224478 "2004-01-14T23:54:45Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 10\
**Page:** 1
**Author:**  [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\
**Post date:** [January 14, 2004, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/testing-html-character-entities/224478/1 "2004-01-14T23:54:45Z")
σ
Σ
ω
Ω
ℵ
π
Π
—
é
They don’t work in preview. This is a bug and should be fixed.
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**Author:**  [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\
**Post date:** [January 15, 2004, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/testing-html-character-entities/224478/2 "2004-01-15T00:09:58Z")
The old vBulletin software didn’t support HTML character entities either, did it?
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**Author:**  [@Achernar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Achernar)\
**Post date:** [January 15, 2004, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/testing-html-character-entities/224478/3 "2004-01-15T00:47:18Z")
It isn’t a matter of support. All it would have to do is _not_ replace all the &'s with &'s. The old version did no such thing.
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**Author:**  [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\
**Post date:** [January 15, 2004, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/testing-html-character-entities/224478/4 "2004-01-15T04:51:08Z")
Ã
Ä
Å
Æ
Ç
È
É
Ê
Ë
Ì
Í
Î
Ï
Ð
Ñ
Ò
Ó
Ô
Õ
Ö
×
Ø
Ù
Ú
Û
Ü
Ý
Þ
ß
à
á
â
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**Author:**  [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\
**Post date:** [January 15, 2004, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/testing-html-character-entities/224478/5 "2004-01-15T04:53:33Z")
Or, in other words, why do you need HTML entities?
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**Author:**  [@Achernar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Achernar)\
**Post date:** [January 15, 2004, 10:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/testing-html-character-entities/224478/6 "2004-01-15T10:57:03Z")
Because not everybody has a Unicode keyboard. And anyway, everything you typed is found in the first 256 Unicode characters (extended ASCII). What about stuff beyond that, like everything in the OP except eacute?
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**Author:**  [@Ponder\_Stibbons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ponder_Stibbons)\
**Post date:** [January 15, 2004, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/testing-html-character-entities/224478/7 "2004-01-15T15:44:13Z")
You mean like, for example, Cyrillic? АБВГДЕЖЗИЙ …
How about some Chinese? Here’s a few picked at random: 昨晁映朱杠
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**Author:**  [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\
**Post date:** [January 15, 2004, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/testing-html-character-entities/224478/8 "2004-01-15T21:20:48Z")
> [@jayjay](#):
>
> Or, in other words, why do you need HTML entities?
Because we should be able to create posts that are _OS independent_. HTML doesn’t depend on any specific encoding, and the browser is able to decide what encoding makes sense in the current locale to display the entities.
It’s fairly stupid to make your posts dependent on anything other than vBCode and HTML.
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**Author:**  [@KP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KP)\
**Post date:** [January 17, 2004, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/testing-html-character-entities/224478/9 "2004-01-17T03:51:25Z")
I absolutely second Derleth’s position.
Ampersanded HTML “special character” entities serve both the poster and the reader.
Special charaters are extremely useful in mathematical threads, threads about Greek, Hebrew (e.g. Biblical linguistics) etc. and diagrams
Not everyone uses Windows, and Windows users may not use the American English localization, so cut’n’pasted characters may be displayed as different characters on their browser. This is an unnecessary problem, since all browsers handle ampersanded HTML just fine.
In fact, the board already uses ampersanded HTML – and that’s what causes the problem! It translates user-posted &s to the HTML equivalent “&”. In other words, the board uses it, but assumes _I_ don’t know how and “corrects” my post to save me from myself.
Passing ampersands untranslated might occasionally confuse people who are not familiar with HTML/web conventions. This can be fixed by creating a “don’t translate” tag that doesn’t translate, e.g. [nofix]Λο&γσος[/nofix]. Ideally, this would be a checkbox option with a user CP setting, like “Show your signature”. It could default to “translate ampersands” = ON, and those of us who understand ampersanded characters could turn it off.
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**Author:**  [@KP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KP)\
**Post date:** [January 17, 2004, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/testing-html-character-entities/224478/10 "2004-01-17T03:54:38Z")
I also meant to say, it serves posters who do use several computers, and may not have the option of configuring each to their personal tastes (e.g. school labs or work computers). ℵ or α can be easily typed from any keyboard or configuration, and is easy to remember.