Lesson 8

Lesson 8 - Special Characters

There are a number of characters in HTML that you cannot enter directly from the keyboard. You have already been looking at a few - how do you think I managed to display HTML tags on the screen without them being interpreted by the browser as, well, HTML tags ?

The answer is quite simple, I have had to use the special characters that are available in HTML to allow me to add things like '<' and '>' etc without having them decoded as tags ?

How does one identify a special character, well they all start with an ampersand (&) and end with a semi-colon (;) and have some text in the middle to describe them. This means that an ampersand cannot be used in an HTML document because it gets interpreted as the start of a special code and usually gets ignored.

Here is a table of all the special characters, their codes and a description.

ISO Latin-1 characters
HTML Coding	Result	Description	HTML Coding	Result	Description
À	À	capital A, grave accent	ï	ï	small i, diæresis/umlaut
à	à	small a, grave accent	Ð	Ð	capital Eth, Icelandic
Á	Á	capital A, acute accent	ð	ð	small eth, Icelandic
á	á	small a, acute accent	Ñ	Ñ	capital N, tilde
Â	Â	capital A, circumflex	ñ	ñ	small n, tilde
â	â	small a, circumflex	Ò	Ò	capital O, grave accent
Ã	Ã	capital A, tilde	ò	ò	small o, grave accent
ã	ã	small a, tilde	Ó	Ó	capital O, acute accent
Ä	Ä	capital A, diæresis/umlaut	ó	ó	small o, acute accent
ä	ä	small a, diæresis/umlaut	Ô	Ô	capital O, circumflex
Å	Å	capital A, ring	ô	ô	small o, circumflex
å	å	small a, ring	Õ	Õ	capital O, tilde
Æ	Æ	capital AE ligature	õ	õ	small o, tilde
æ	æ	small ae ligature	Ö	Ö	capital O, diæresis/umlaut
Ç	Ç	capital C, cedilla	ö	ö	small o, diæresis/umlaut
ç	ç	small c, cedilla	Ø	Ø	capital O, slash
È	È	capital E, grave accent	ø	ø	small o, slash
è	è	small e, grave accent	Ù	Ù	capital U, grave accent
É	É	capital E, acute accent	ù	ù	small u, grave accent
é	é	small e, acute accent	Ú	Ú	capital U, acute accent
Ê	Ê	capital E, circumflex	ú	ú	small u, acute accent
ê	ê	small e, circumflex	Û	Û	capital U, circumflex
Ë	Ë	capital E, diæresis/umlaut	û	û	small u, circumflex
ë	ë	small e, diæresis/umlaut	Ü	Ü	capital U, diæresis/umlaut
Ì	Ì	capital I, grave accent	ü	ü	small u, diæresis/umlaut
ì	ì	small i, grave accent	Ý	Ý	capital Y, acute accent
Í	Í	capital I, acute accent	ý	ý	small y, acute accent
í	í	small i, acute accent	Þ	Þ	capital Thorn, Icelandic
Î	Î	capital I, circumflex	þ	þ	small thorn, Icelandic
î	î	small i, circumflex	ß	ß	small sharp s, German sz
Ï	Ï	capital I, diæresis/umlaut	ÿ	ÿ	small y, diæresis/umlaut

Additional characters from ISO 8859-1
HTML Coding	Result	Description	HTML Coding	Result	Description
		non-breaking space	±	±	plus-or-minus sign
¡	¡	inverted exclamation mark	²	²	superscript two
¢	¢	cent sign	³	³	superscript three
£	£	pound sign	´	´	acute accent
¤	¤	general currency sign	µ	µ	micro sign
¥	¥	yen sign	¶	¶	pilcrow (paragraph sign)
¦	¦	broken (vertical) bar	·	·	middle dot
§	§	section sign	¸	¸	cedilla
¨	¨	umlaut/dieresis	¹	¹	superscript one
©	©	copyright sign	º	º	ordinal indicator, male
ª	ª	ordinal indicator, fem	»	»	angle quotation mark, right
«	«	angle quotation mark, left	¼	¼	fraction one-quarter
¬	¬	not sign	½	½	fraction one-half
		soft hyphen	¾	¾	fraction three-quarters
®	®	registered sign	¿	¿	inverted question mark
¯	¯	macron	×	×	multiply sign
°	°	degree sign	&div;	÷	division sign

Notice how the GBP currency symbol requires a special character !

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