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deronsizemore
10-18-2007, 02:13 PM
Use the special HTML Character code?

I've always used to the codes for things like "&" but I've never thought about doing it for apostrophies. I've noticed that after one of my articles was submitted to stumbleupon, the title was messed up because I had the word "You're" in the title and it threw some garbage in there for the apostrophe.

I've known here at TBE too that the feed in the signatures mess up apostrophies.

Seems to be a bit overkill to me to write the special character code on everything like this?
davemcnally
10-18-2007, 02:30 PM
I try to use entities where possible but there are always times when I forget to. I wouldn't leave it out deliberately.
shyflower
10-18-2007, 02:34 PM
So, are you saying that at Stumble Upon you used or didn't use the character code? i.e..... what kind of garbage did you throw? (Food fight! :naughty: )

I've notice the anomaly with feeds here... but I so hate those character codes (and stopping every 10 seconds to look them up.)
deronsizemore
10-18-2007, 02:37 PM
So, are you saying that at Stumble Upon you used or didn't use the character code? i.e..... what kind of garbage did you throw? (Food fight! :naughty: )

I've notice the anomaly with feeds here... but I so hate those character codes (and stopping every 10 seconds to look them up.)


Well recent article I wrote got stumbled. I visited the stumbled upon page to see who stumbled it and I noticed that at the top where it tells the title of the post it read: If You&8217;re a Web Developer, Your Ski...

I guess I'll start using the special characters, but man that'll be a big hassle stop either stop and start to find the code for the character or to write the article and then go back after it's finished and change everything.
shyflower
10-18-2007, 02:43 PM
I use this in a firefox sidebar. Helps some.

HTML Character Codes (TnTLuoma.com) (http://www.tntluoma.com/sidebars/codes/)
deronsizemore
10-18-2007, 02:53 PM
I use this in a firefox sidebar. Helps some.

HTML Character Codes (TnTLuoma.com) (http://www.tntluoma.com/sidebars/codes/)

Ah, that should help out a lot! Thanks.
ses5909
10-18-2007, 03:04 PM
I never use character codes....like ever. I do see the ? replaces the apostrophe here and my brain is so trained to switch them around now that I don't even notice it anymore.
Jeremy
10-18-2007, 03:13 PM
never used them either. I'm far too lazy to care.
deronsizemore
10-18-2007, 03:20 PM
Well I'm glad that others don't care. It's one of those things that I care, but I don't care, you know? I care how it looks, but I don't care enough to take an extra 30 minutes to fix it. As long as it comes across right on my site for my readers, that's really all that matters I guess.

I'll probably pay closer attention now with that sidebar link Linda gave me, but I wont obsess over it.
samwoodfin
10-18-2007, 03:20 PM
I only use the codes for things like umlauts and accents. But if I Stumble a page, and the title is screwy, I fix it before sending it through.
kingjacob
10-18-2007, 03:44 PM
I only ever use it for important symbols like ♥
Jessi
10-19-2007, 02:18 AM
I never use character codes....like ever. I do see the ? replaces the apostrophe here and my brain is so trained to switch them around now that I don't even notice it anymore.

Same here. I'd never really even considered changing my own code to fix that sort of stuff because it doesn't even cross my mind and I don't really notice much in other people's stuff either now. My mind takes care of it on its own.
rodaniel
10-20-2007, 11:28 AM
I always hand-code apostrophes, em dashes, percent signs, and other special characters. Perhaps I'm a little OCD, but hey, when you've got one of those squiggly little dudes in your last name, you tend to be more aware of these things...

If I may be so bold as to plop in a shameless plug, I recently did a guest blogging article on this very topic, Blogging With Character (http://neonscent.com/blog/2007/08/02/blogging-with-character/), over on NeonScent.
Bob!
10-20-2007, 01:02 PM
I have it on my sidebar in my most viewed post section, one of them shows as Most beautiful photo site I’ve ever seen… because I never gave it a thought. To many years of just typing without thinking I suppose :D
Dan Grossman
10-23-2007, 05:01 PM
Deron,

If you view the source of your page with the apostrophe in the title, you'll see that WordPress already converted it to an HTML entity. That's exactly what showed up in Stumbleupon. Typing the entity by hand would have the same result.
deronsizemore
10-23-2007, 08:33 PM
Deron,

If you view the source of your page with the apostrophe in the title, you'll see that WordPress already converted it to an HTML entity. That's exactly what showed up in Stumbleupon. Typing the entity by hand would have the same result.

Ah, right you are. Thanks for pointing that out.
t(-.-t)
10-25-2007, 07:48 PM
I let the software worry about making my text prettier
berlinlife06
10-27-2007, 01:57 AM
I use this in a firefox sidebar. Helps some.

HTML Character Codes (TnTLuoma.com) (http://www.tntluoma.com/sidebars/codes/)

Thank you so much for this link! It is the perfect tool for people like me. I have no idea about codes and this is a little help. Thanks.
Jessi
10-31-2007, 01:44 AM
I just had my first real noticeable encounter with this. What timing! People commented on my post about "Clip 'N' Go Mints and Gum," and half of the subject line of the automatic email I got was filled with random characters, lol. With Blogger's new change of being able to subscribe to comments so easily, I'm going to have to pay closer attention to my titles so my readers don't get stuck with that. It's one thing for it to be replaced with a ?, but it's another to have several characters interrupt. Thanks for the link to codes!