Inserting Special Characters

Need a ® symbol or ¢ (ALT+0162 from the 10 key pad.) sign? Certain special characters are represented in HTML by a name or a number, referred to as an entity. HTML includes entity names for characters such as the copyright symbol (©) the ampersand (&), and the registered-trademark symbol (®). Each entity has both a name (such as —) and a numeric equivalent (such as —).

A complete list of special characters available per font, can be found on all Windows operating systems. To see the list go to START/ALL PROGRAMS/ACCESSORIES/SYSTEM TOOLS/CHARACTER MAP.

HTML uses the angle brackets <> in its code, but you may need to express the special characters for greater than or less than without Dreamweaver interpreting them as code. In this case, use &gt; for greater than (>) and &it; for less than (<).

Unfortunately, many browsers (especially older browsers, and browsers other than Navigator and Internet Explorer) don’t properly display many of the named entities.

You can insert several special characters (in the form of HTML entities) by choosing the Characters category in the Insert bar.

To insert a special character into a document:
In the document view window, place the insertion point where you want to insert a special character.
Do one of the following:
Choose the name of the character from the INSERT/CHARACTERS submenu.
In the Insert bar, choose the Characters category and select the character you want.

There are many other special characters available; to select one of them, choose INSERT /CHARACTERS/MORE or select the Insert More Characters icon in the Insert bar, select a character, then click OK.