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How do I include Foreign Currency Symbols in HTML?

Dave, I'm writing something where I need to place various currency symbols in an HTML file. (euros, yens, and pounds) Is it best to use names like ¥ or numbers like ¥? I presume just putting the raw text character in the file is bad.

Dave's Answer:

No question here: names are much better because they're portable, whereas a sequence like ¥ indexes character #165 in the ASCII table, which is going to be different on different platforms, and even within different typefaces.

I have an extensive reference page that offers an easy cheat-sheet for all the official character entities defined in HTML 4.01 too called HTML 4.01 Character Entities.

If you want to see the official reference for these character entities, pop over to W3.org and you'll see that you're good to go with ¥ and so on.

One more benefit: ¥ is a lot more readable too.

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