HTML Charsets
Write the character encoding declaration for a UTF-8 document.
Understand the topic
A character encoding maps stored bytes to characters. UTF-8 supports a broad range of languages and is the normal choice for modern web pages. Save the file as UTF-8 and declare it early using meta charset. The server should also send a matching charset in Content-Type. A declaration cannot repair a file saved using the wrong encoding.
Worked example
<!doctype html>
<html lang="en"><head><meta charset="utf-8"><title>Names</title></head>
<body><p>Names from every language belong on the web.</p></body></html>lang describes the language of the content, while charset describes how the bytes are decoded. They solve different problems.
Practice
Write the character encoding declaration for a UTF-8 document.
Show a suggested answer
<meta charset="utf-8">Common mistake
Garbled characters often indicate a mismatch between file encoding, server headers, and document metadata. Check all three.