Special Characters

Whoo, a reference page! This will briefly cover how to create special characters like Å or õ in HTML. As you probably noticed, these aren't on the conventional keyboard, so there is a simple method for getting them to appear in your web pages.

All of these characters start with a & (found above 7 on the keyboard) and end in a semicolon (;). Therefore, you only need to remember what goes between if you want to work from memory. For the convenience of those without great memories, the table below keeps the & in front and the semicolon at the end.

" " Double quote
& & Ampersand
&lt; < Less-than
&gt; > Greater-than
&nbsp; absolute space
&iexcl; ¡ Upside-down !
&cent; ¢ Cent sign
&pound; £ British Pound sign
&curren; ¤ circle with dashes at corners
&yen; ¥ Y ontop of an equals
&brvbar; ¦ Vertical line with gap in middle
&sect; § Section sign
&uml; ¨ Two dots up in the air
&copy; © Copyright
&ordf; ª to the power of "a"
&laquo; « Two small less-than signs: the German open-quote
&not; ¬ Not sign from classical logic
&reg; ® Registered sign
&macr; ¯ Macron (underscore except over)
&deg; ° Degree sign
&plusmn; ± Plus-or-minus sign
&sup2 ² To the power of 2
&sup3; ³ To the power of 3
&acute; ´ Little dash pointing to North-East
&micro; µ Micro sign, lower case Greek Mu
&para; Paragraph sign
&middot; · Decimal Point (English style, mid-level)
&cedil; ¸ Small sickle shape, low down
&sup1; ¹ To the power of 1
&ordm; º Degree sign
&raquo; » Two small greater-than signs: the German close-quote
&frac14; ¼ One quarter
&frac12; ½ One half
&frac34; ¾ Three quarters
&iquest; ¿ Upside-down ?
&times; × Times sign (an x without serifs)
&divide; ÷ Division sign
&ETH; Ð Old English voiced "Th"
&eth; ð Old Englished voiced "th"
&THORN; Þ Old English unvoiced "Th"
&thorn; þ Old English unvoiced "th"
&AElig; Æ "A" and "E" in a ligature
&aelig; æ "a" and "e" in a ligature
&OElig; Π"O" and "E" in a ligature
&oelig; œ "o" and "e" in a ligature
&Aring; Å "A" with a little circle above: Angstrom sign
&Oslash; Ø "O" with diagonal line through: Empty set sign
&Ccedil; Ç"C" with cedilla (sickle shape) underneath
&ccedil; ç "c" with cedilla underneath
&szlig; ß German "sz" ligature
&Ntilde; Ñ N with tilde
&ntilde; ñ n with tilde

In addition to all the above, most of the vowels can have the following special marks attached to them: acutes, graves, circumflexes, umlauts, tildes, and rings. The table below should give you the idea as to what they look like, if you don't know.

The pattern for writing these is firm and easy, just follow the four steps below:

Step 1:
& symbol in front
Step 2:
The vowel you want
(upper or lower case)
Step 3:
Whichever special mark you need,
by using one of the these:
acute, grave, circ,
uml, tilde, ring
Step 4:
semicolon at the end

As I said before, most work. There are a few exceptions where the characters just don't exist. If they're not in my table then that's the case, as far as I know.

A acute Á
A grave À
A circ Â
A uml Ä
A tilde Ã
A ring Å
a acute á
a grave à
a circ â
a uml ä
a tilde ã
a ring å
E acute É
E grave È
E circ Ê
E uml Ë
e acute é
e grave è
e circ ê
e uml ë
I acute Í
I grave Ì
I circ Î
I uml Ï
i acute í
i grave ì
i circ î
i uml ï
O acute Ó
O grave Ò
O circ Ô
O uml Ö
O tilde Õ
o acute ó
o grave ò
o circ ô
o uml ö
o tilde õ
U acute Ú
U grave Ù
U circ Û
U uml Ü
u acute ú
u grave ù
u circ û
u uml ü
Y acute Ý
Y uml Ÿ
y acute ý
y uml ÿ

One (two) last thing before I'm out: here are some links to a neat program my brother wrote that some of you might find useful.

http://wjholden.com/CTTA.exe - C# .NET GUI program for Windows.

http://wjholden.com/convert_special_chars.c - ANSI C command-line program (oriented towards Linux people, but usable on Windows if you have a C compiler).

-Tentus