HTML question

[rm]

- Freaky control characters showing up in Firefox on Macs.
- They show up on nothing else -- not in Safari, not on PCs.

What the hell should I be looking for that will make this stop?

Comments

[rm.livejournal.com]

Dumb, dumb HTML question:

do I write out "ampersand-quot-semicolon" or do I write out &";

am unclear.

[browneyedgirl65.livejournal.com]

Sorry, you would use the single character ampersand where I say ampersand. I can't tell if LJ is going to render it or not, sometimes.

Use this:

& to print out an ampersand character

" to print out a properly escaped quotation character

These are called html entities, and there's a list of them here: http://htmlhelp.com/reference/html40/entities/ plus other places if you google

[rm.livejournal.com]

Thank you thank you thank you!

I feel embarrassed that I've never needed to know this before.

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

Yes, and they're also the safest way to do accented character if you do the occasional entries (as I do) in German or French.

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

Hey! Something I can understand and use.
(Normal procedure:search for non-English word phrase or character online, then cut and paste. Clumsy, but me.)
Techno-peasantly yours.

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

It works, certainly.

For email, I'm familiar enough with the alt-keypad method and I know most of the characters I need by heart :)

further confusion

[jinian.livejournal.com]

Neither: it should look like " (once my HTML is processed).

" (if you are seeing this in plain text) is what to type.

[misch.livejournal.com]

There's always problems doing copy-pasta from word processors. Most notably, when Word or Open Office do double quote substitution.

Word:
Tools | Autocorrect Options | Auto-format as you type (tab)
Uncheck: Replace as you type "Straight quotes" with "smart quotes"

[browneyedgirl65.livejournal.com]

And that is the reason Word is the bane of my existence :-P. Thanks for that tip, I'll have to remember it...

[browneyedgirl65.livejournal.com]

and, copy-pasta? FTW :D

[misch.livejournal.com]

Definition.

[browneyedgirl65.livejournal.com]

Yup, found my way there shortly thereafter. Cute :-)