As stated above, your browser should be set to use the UTF-8 character set. However, there are still some issues to be aware of when entering characters. The characters that present the most problems are the quote (‘) and the double quote (“). The reason for this is that these characters are often used within a computer program to specify a string value being sent to the user interface. For example, the statement –
document.write(‘Today is Wednesday’)
may be written by a JavaScript function to a screen. When this is translated to French, this would look like –
document.write(‘Aujourd'hui est Mercredi’)
The additional quote in the middle of the text will cause a syntax error when the browser attempts to display the character. For this reason, you may need to substitute the character value of the quote as so –
document.write(‘Aujourd
#39hui est Mercredi’)
or as
document.write(‘Aujourd#x27hui est Mercredi’)
The first method uses the decimal value of the quote; the second method uses the hexadecimal value.
This same principle can be used for all characters. Please see Appendix E for a list of characters, their decimal and hexadecimal values. Some characters, such as the double quote also have a form like –
quot;
