HTML Charset

Subject: html

📖 HTML Charset

In HTML, the charset (character set) defines how text characters are encoded and interpreted by the browser. It determines how symbols, letters, emojis, and special characters are displayed correctly across different devices and browsers.

❓ Why Is Charset Important?

If the browser doesn’t know what encoding to use, it might display garbled text or incorrect characters. For example:

  • é could appear as é
  • ç might show up as unexpected symbols

✅ A proper charset ensures consistent rendering of multilingual content and special characters.

🔤 UTF-8: The Recommended Character Set

UTF-8 (Unicode Transformation Format - 8-bit) is the most widely used and recommended charset today.

Benefits:

  • 🌐 Supports almost all characters worldwide
  • 💾 Backward-compatible with ASCII
  • 🌍 Ideal for multilingual websites
  • 🚀 Default encoding for HTML5

🧱 Declaring Charset in HTML

You must declare the charset in the <head> of your HTML using a <meta> tag.

Syntax:

🚀 Try it in Compiler

Example:

🚀 Try it in Compiler

📌 Important: Declare the charset as early as possible inside the <head> to prevent rendering issues.

⚙️ Other (Less Common) Charsets

CharsetDescription
ISO-8859-1Western European languages
Windows-1252Windows encoding (superset of ISO-8859-1)

🚫 These are mostly outdated. Use UTF-8 for all modern development.

✅ Key Takeaways

  • Always include: <meta charset="UTF-8"> in your HTML <head>.
  • UTF-8 ensures proper rendering of emojis, special characters, and global text.
  • Improves cross-browser compatibility, accessibility, and SEO.
  • Declaring charset early avoids misinterpretation of content.

Using UTF-8 is a best practice in all professional web development.

Next: HTML Attributes