Encoding characters in HTML

On certain occasions it's necessary to encode some characters (called special characters), when we want to use accented characters they must be encoded as other characters that are considered as being the special &, <,> among others. In certain situations it may be necessary to encode URL addresses as well, the addresses (URLs) should not contain special characters or they may be misinterpreted.

This encoding may be essential for proper visualization, because there are certain programs that can not decode the characters. Some programs encoding characters automatically (as the case of DreamWeaver) but others do not (like FrontPage). We need to be aware of this fact at the time of publishing data.

You can view a list of accented characters commonly used in HTML, encoded characters in URLs and a large list of ASCII characters and other special characters, depending on the use of them.