A Few Characters
| The following encodings should be used when writing for the web: | |||
| Hex Value | Decimal Value | Character | Character Name |
| 26 | 38 | & | Ampersand—or use & instead |
| 3c | 60 | < | Less-than sign—or use < instead |
| 3e | 62 | > | Greater-than sign—or use > instead |
| a0 | 160 | non-breaking space—or you can use for this | |
| a9 | 169 | © | copyright symbol |
| b0 | 176 | ° | degree symbol |
| 215b | 8539 | ⅛ | one eighth |
| bc | 188 | ¼ | one quarter |
| 215c | 8540 | ⅜ | three eighths |
| bd | 189 | ½ | one half |
| 215d | 8541 | ⅝ | five eighths |
| be | 190 | ¾ | three quarters |
| 215e | 8542 | ⅞ | seven eighths |
| 2153 | 8531 | ⅓ | one third |
| 2154 | 8532 | ⅔ | two thirds |
| 2155 | 8533 | ⅕ | one fifth |
| 2156 | 8534 | ⅖ | two fifths |
| 2157 | 8535 | ⅗ | three fifths |
| 2158 | 8536 | ⅘ | four fifths |
| 2010 | 8208 | ‐ | hyphen—this is always a hyphen, while the key next to the zero on your keyboard is a "hyphen-minus" |
| 2013 | 8211 | – | en dash—used to indicate a range of just about anything with number, including dates, numbers, game scores, and pages in any sort of document. |
| 2014 | 8212 | — | em dash—used to indicate a break in thought, a parenthetical statement that deserves more attention than parentheses indicate, or to indicate an open range |
| 2018 | 8216 | ‘ | opening single quote |
| 2019 | 8217 | ’ | closing single quote |
| 201c | 8220 | “ | opening double quote |
| 201d | 8221 | ” | closing double quote |
| 2026 | 8230 | … | ellipsis—used to indicate one or more missing words in a quotation |
| 2032 | 8242 | ′ | single prime—used to represent feet or minutes |
| 2033 | 8243 | ″ | double prime—used to represent inches or seconds |
| 2212 | 8722 | − | minus—this is always a minus, while the key next to the zero on your keyboard is a "hyphen-minus" |
| 2191 | 8593 | ↑ | up arrow (Note that this and the next three characters don't seem to scale smoothly. The arrows work best slightly enlarged from normal while the male and female symbols look best at 1em. |
| 2193 | 8595 | ↓ | down arrow |
| 2642 | 9794 | ♂ | male |
| 2640 | 9792 | ♀ | female |
| C + 305 | C + 773; | C̅ | to create combinations that don't have actual unicode characters, us a base character (in this case the capital letter 'C') with a combining character (in this case #773 (x0305), the combining overline). The combining diacritical marks are those characters from 768 through 879 (x0300 through x036f). |
| The following characters may be entered directly as keystrokes on the keyboard (i.e. you can just type them). They are Unicode (and ASCII) decimal characters 32 through 126 (but NOT 38, 60, or 62—see above): | |||
| Hex Value | Decimal Value | Character | Character Name |
| 20 | 32 | Space | |
| 21 | 33 | ! | Exclamation point |
| 22 | 34 | " | Straight Quotes |
| 23 | 35 | # | Pound or Number sign |
| 24 | 36 | $ | Dollar sign |
| 25 | 37 | % | Percent sign |
| 26 | 38 | & | Ampersand (or use &) |
| 27 | 39 | ' | Straight Apostrophe |
| 28 | 40 | ( | Left Parenthesis |
| 29 | 41 | ) | Right Parenthesis |
| 2a | 42 | * | Asterisk |
| 2b | 43 | + | Plus sign |
| 2c | 44 | , | Comma |
| 2d | 45 | - | Hyphen (or minus) |
| 2e | 46 | . | Full stop (period) |
| 2f | 47 | / | Slash |
| 30 to 39 | 48 to 57 | 0 to 9 | Digits 0 (zero) to 9 (nine) |
| 3a | 58 | : | Colon |
| 3b | 59 | ; | Semi-colon |
| 3c | 60 | < | Less-than sign (or use <) |
| 3d | 61 | = | Equals sign |
| 3e | 62 | > | Greater-than sign (or use >) |
| 3f | 63 | ? | Question mark |
| 40 | 64 | @ | At sign |
| 41 to 5a | 65 to 90 | A to Z | Capital letters A to Z |
| 5b | 91 | [ | Left Square Bracket |
| 5c | 92 | \ | Backslash |
| 5d | 93 | ] | Right Square Bracket |
| 5e | 94 | ^ | Circumflex accent (caret, up-arrowhead) |
| 5f | 95 | _ | Low line (spacing underline) |
| 60 | 96 | ` | Grave accent (backtick) |
| 61 to 7a | 97 to 122 | a to z | Small letters a to z |
| 7b | 123 | { | Left Curly Bracket |
| 7c | 124 | | | Vertical Bar |
| 7d | 125 | } | Right Curly Bracket |
| 7e | 126 | ~ | Tilde |
Some of this information was taken from The Trouble With EM 'n EN (and Other Shady Characters).