Special and Extended Characters

HTML uses several keyboard characters to interpret the markup language. These include the ampersand, double quotes, and open and close angle brackets. To display these characters (and others) on a page without the Web browser software interpreting them as HTML code, use the following keystroke combinations.

& (AMPERSAND)

This code is used for entering an ampersand. Note that this is NOT a tag. The opening and closing carats are not required. Strict HTML forbids the use of the shift-7 (keyboard) ampersand alone in HTML, because the ampersand character by itself indicates the beginning of HTML code.

& - singular code

" (DOUBLE QUOTE MARKS)

This code is used for entering quote marks. Note that this is NOT a tag. The opening and closing carats are not required. Strict HTML requires you to not use the shift-apostrophe (keyboard) quotes in HTML, because they are reserved for variables inside HTML code tags.

" - singular code

  (NOBREAK SPACE)

This code is used for entering a no-break space. Note that this is NOT a tag. The opening and closing carats are not required. This is used to space text manually, where required.

  - singular code

More special characters

Many more special characters are available in HTML by using the ampersand/semi-colon code combination. Some of these include:

< - an open angle bracket <
> - a close angle bracket >
© - a copyright symbol ©
® - a registered symbol ®
™ - a trademark symbol ™
¼ - the fraction ¼
½ - the fraction ½
¾ - the fraction ¾

In addition to these special characters, there is a complete set of uppercase and lowercase letters with accents, tildes, cedillas, umlauts, dipthongs, circumflexes, etc. Some of these are:

á - a with acute accent á
é - e with acute accent é
ç - c with cedilla ç
ö - o with umlaut ö
ñ - n with tilde ñ
è - e with grave accent è
Á - A with acute accent Á
É - E with acute accent É
Ç - C with cedilla Ç
Ö - O with umlaut Ö
Ñ - N with tilde Ñ
È - E with grave accent È

A complete list of all special and extended characters is maintained on the TeamWeb site at the University of Texas at Austin.