Title: html encoding for special characters
Last modified: August 18, 2016

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# html encoding for special characters

 *  [ludwin](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ludwin/)
 * (@ludwin)
 * [20 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/html-encoding-for-special-characters/)
 * Hello! My blog is in French, and I want all the text encoded in html code for
   special characters, for this is the best way to make them readable for everyone
   in the world. Forget about iso-8899-15 (something like that), Unicode, etc. Just
   use the html encoding: & eacute ; (without the spaces) is é, & ccedil ; is ç,
   and so on. Almost anybody in the world will read this right.
 * Now, I would like world press to do this automatically. If I or a visitor of 
   my blog types ç, I would like WordPress to record it as & cedil ; (without the
   spaces of course). So the french characters would be readable from any modern
   computer, regardless of the language of the browser, desktop, and so.
 * Is it possible to encode everything in html codes?

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

 *  [yngwin](https://wordpress.org/support/users/yngwin/)
 * (@yngwin)
 * [20 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/html-encoding-for-special-characters/#post-242073)
 * Yes, but probably a bit complicated.
 * Much easier is to have your blog in utf-8 (unicode) and write the articles as
   such, then the special characters will also show up right everywhere.
 *  Thread Starter [ludwin](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ludwin/)
 * (@ludwin)
 * [20 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/html-encoding-for-special-characters/#post-242268)
 * Yngwin, thanks for your reply.
    Unicode is not yet the default encoding on every
   computer. It might be the encoding format of the future, but nowadays, I find
   that html encoding is safer…
 * If I chose unicode, my browser must be set to read unicode, if I uses latin-9,
   the result will be horrific. I must therefore warn my readers: chose unicode 
   encoding…
 * The advantage of using html encoding is that it will be read correctly no matter
   which encoding system has been chosen in the browser.
 *  [Minna](https://wordpress.org/support/users/minna/)
 * (@minna)
 * [20 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/html-encoding-for-special-characters/#post-242270)
 * If you have a “declaration” for the correct encoding (like `<meta http-equiv="
   Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />`), browsers should automatically
   change to using it. Right? Are there situations when it isn’t so? (Can a user
   set a fixed encoding?!) Do some browsers ignore it? I’m just asking out of curiosity…
 *  [yngwin](https://wordpress.org/support/users/yngwin/)
 * (@yngwin)
 * [20 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/html-encoding-for-special-characters/#post-242562)
 * Indeed Minna, if the document is sent the right headers, saying that the document
   is utf-8 (even more important than the meta-tag, although that helps for off-
   line reading of the document) the browser should automatically use that encoding.
   The reader can change that, but that takes effort.
 *  Thread Starter [ludwin](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ludwin/)
 * (@ludwin)
 * [20 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/html-encoding-for-special-characters/#post-242575)
 * Minna, some browsers offer the option to let the user choose to always use a 
   given set of encoding, background and font color, font fact, etc, but it is not
   recommended to use that option, except in given cases.
 * As far as I know, html encoding is the surest way to always get the result you
   want. But if the header says utf-8, and you actually type in utf-8 characters,
   this should be enough, for it works in most cases.
 * I worry about the encoding because I write in French living in South-East Asia,
   editing my blog using cybercoffees. This is an extreme case. In some cybercoffees,
   my blog looks bizarre if I don’t use html encoding.

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

The topic ‘html encoding for special characters’ is closed to new replies.

 * In: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/)
 * 5 replies
 * 3 participants
 * Last reply from: [ludwin](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ludwin/)
 * Last activity: [20 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/html-encoding-for-special-characters/#post-242575)
 * Status: not resolved

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