Open In App

How to set character encoding for document in HTML5 ?

Improve
Improve
Like Article
Like
Save
Share
Report

In this article, we will learn how to set character encoding for document in HTML5. Character encoding is a method of defining a mapping between bytes and text. To display an HTML document correctly, we must choose a proper character encoding.  

The different types of character encoding include:

  • ASCII Character Set: It is the first ever character encoding standard. The major disadvantage with ASCII is that it contained only a limited range of characters (128 characters).
  • ANSI Character Set: This standard was an extended version of standard ASCII character set. It supports 256 characters.
  • ISO-8859-1 Character Set: It is the default character encoding in HTML 2.0. It is also an extension of ASCII standard with International characters. This used full bytes (8-bits) to show characters.
  • UTF-8 Character Set: This standard covers almost all of the characters and symbols in the world. The limitations of ANSI and ISO-8859-1 were satisfied by the UTF-8 Character Set. The default character encoding for HTML5 is UTF-8.

The HTML5 specification encourages developers to use the UTF-8 character set.

A character can be 1-4 bytes long in the UTF-8 Encoding Standard. This is also the most preferred encoding for email and web pages.

  • Character encoding can be specified in the meta tag in HTML.
  • The meta tag is used for specifying metadata about the webpage and will not be displayed in the web pages.
  • The meta tag helps search engines to understand what a web page is about.
  • The meta tag should be placed with the head tag in HTML.

Syntax:

1. For HTML4

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8"> 

2. For HTML5

The default character encoding for HTML5 is UTF-8, but you can still specify this to be extra cautious. 

<meta charset="UTF-8">  

Example: In this example, we will see the use of a meta character set

HTML




<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    <!-- NOTE: <meta charset="UTF-8">
        is also applicable. -->
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <title>Page Title</title>
</head>
<body>
    <h2>Welcome To GFG</h2>
    <p>
        Default code has been loaded
        into the Editor.
    </p>
</body>
</html>


Output:

 


Last Updated : 15 May, 2023
Like Article
Save Article
Previous
Next
Share your thoughts in the comments
Similar Reads