Use of symbols in HTML

[sskett]

I thought that HTML didn't have symbols like :, & > etc and you needed
to use the &xxx; in their place.

I was playing about with a page and couldn't remember the correct
language so I just stuck the plain symbols in there, as I wasn't
worried if they'd work or not.

But they seem to work fine! Was this just an issue with old browsers
or is it a quirk of the new ones? I'm guessing standards based HTML
still requires the &xxx; format?

 

[Dylan Parry]

Spake sskett unto thee:

I thought that HTML didn't have symbols like :, & > etc and you needed
to use the &xxx; in their place.

You can use ":" with no problems at all, "&" should be written "&" to
avoid confusion with the beginning of a character entity, ">" should be
okay usually, but it can be confusing and so should be written as ">".

A list of such codes can be found on my site at
http://webpageworkshop.co.uk/main/standard_characters