How to create special characters in HTML web pages

Looking to put the ç back in français or the é into Olé? Below is a listing of not so common special characters that can be easily included in your web pages. Some of these characters can also be used to spice up your web pages without needing to use graphics.

Special characters are properly known as character entities and come in two forms, numeric and symbolic. In both cases, the coding for these characters always begins with an ampersand (&) and ends in a semi-colon. In the case of numeric entities, a hash symbol immediately follows the ampersand.

Here's a couple of ways to implement them.

1) Bookmark this page for easy access and just copy and paste the special characters where you want them to appear as you need them.

2) Paste either the numeric or symbolic code for the special characters into the appropriate place in the HTML source code of your web page.

For example, this in your source code:

français

or

français

would appear as:

 français

when viewed in a browser.

Please note that in the case of the symbolic codes for special characters below that they are case sensitive. These special character codes should work with most standard fonts such as Times New Roman, Verdana, Arial and Courier New unless otherwise indicated.

Using the Windows Charmap application

Another way to select from a wide range of special characters is to do the following (assuming that you are running Windows):

1. Go to "Start", Select "Run".

2. Type "charmap" and then click "OK".

3. Select one of the more web friendly fonts such as Times New Roman, Arial, Courier New or Verdana (my apologies to Mac users) and you'll see a range of characters that you can use.

4. Click on the character that you want, click "select", then "copy"

5. You can now paste the character/entity directly on to your web page.

Michael Bloch
Taming the Beast.net
http://www.tamingthebeast.net
Tutorials, web content, tools and software 
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