How to Use ASCII Characters in Text, Scripts and HTML

We’re spoiled by word processing programs that easily let us add special characters like the degree symbol, dashes and ampersands into our documents. You may find that when you’re writing a PHP script, a text file or an HTML Web page, those characters don’t display properly. In order to get them to show up right on your Web pages, you need to use special codes to tell the browser which character to display. Here’s how to use ASCII characters in your Web pages and scripts.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• A text program
• A Web browser
• A chart of ASCII characters

Use ASCII Characters

1. Find a reference chart that gives you the codes to use for your purpose. Many ASCII character charts include the ASCII number codes in hex, dec and HTML numbers as well as HTML names.

2. Find the symbol or character that you want to include in your document.

3. At the point where you want to display the symbol or character, type the appropriate code.

4. Save your file as usual.

Examples

5. To display an ampersand in an HTML file, type: &
   
   

6. To display left angle quotes in your document, type: «

7. To display the Registered trademark symbol (R inside a circle), type: ®

Tips & Warnings

• If you’re using ASCII encoding in an HTML document, be sure to specify the character set in a meta tag in the document head.
• Remember to end all HTML ASCII substitutions with a semi-colon.