ISO-8859-1
ISO-8859-1 (named after the International Organization for Standardization) is a legacy character encoding. UTF-8 is the default character set in most browsers.
Use `<meta charset="UTF-8">` to declare the character encoding for your HTML document. Place it inside the <head> section of your HTML file:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Document</title>
</head>
<body>
<!-- Your content here -->
</body>
</html>Reserved Characters in HTML
Some characters are reserved in HTML because they are used to make up the HTML language. For example, you cannot use the greater-than or less-than signs in your text, as the browser will try to interpret them as HTML. Use the entity name or entity number when you want to output any of the reserved characters.
See the list of the reserved characters in the table below:
| Character | Entity Number | Entity Name | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| " | " | " | quotation mark |
| ' | ' | ' | apostrophe |
| & | & | & | ampersand |
| < | < | < | less-than |
| > | > | > | greater-than |
ISO 8859-1 Symbols
| Character | Entity Number | Entity Name | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| non-breaking space | |||
| ¡ | ¡ | ¡ | inverted exclamation mark |
| ¢ | ¢ | ¢ | cent |
| £ | £ | £ | pound |
| ¤ | ¤ | ¤ | currency |
| ¥ | ¥ | ¥ | yen |
| ¦ | ¦ | ¦ | broken vertical bar |
| § | § | § | section |
| ¨ | ¨ | ¨ | spacing diaeresis |
| © | © | © | copyright |
| ª | ª | ª | feminine ordinal indicator |
| « | « | « | angle quotation mark (left) |
| ¬ | ¬ | ¬ | negation |
| | | | soft hyphen |
| ® | ® | ® | registered trademark |
| ¯ | ¯ | ¯ | spacing macron |
| ° | ° | ° | degree |
| ± | ± | ± | plus-or-minus |
| ² | ² | ² | superscript 2 |
| ³ | ³ | ³ | superscript 3 |
| ´ | ´ | ´ | spacing acute |
| µ | µ | µ | micro |
| ¶ | ¶ | ¶ | paragraph |
| · | · | · | middle dot |
| ¸ | ¸ | ¸ | spacing cedilla |
| ¹ | ¹ | ¹ | superscript 1 |
| º | º | º | masculine ordinal indicator |
| » | » | » | angle quotation mark (right) |
| ¼ | ¼ | ¼ | fraction 1/4 |
| ½ | ½ | ½ | fraction 1/2 |
| ¾ | ¾ | ¾ | fraction 3/4 |
| ¿ | ¿ | ¿ | inverted question mark |
| × | × | × | multiplication |
| ÷ | ÷ | ÷ | division |
ISO 8859-1 Characters
| Character | Entity Number | Entity Name | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| À | À | À | capital a, grave accent |
| Á | Á | Á | capital a, acute accent |
| Â | Â | Â | capital a, circumflex accent |
| Ã | Ã | Ã | capital a, tilde |
| Ä | Ä | Ä | capital a, umlaut mark |
| Å | Å | Å | capital a, ring |
| Æ | Æ | Æ | capital ae |
| Ç | Ç | Ç | capital c, cedilla |
| È | È | È | capital e, grave accent |
| É | É | É | capital e, acute accent |
| Ê | Ê | Ê | capital e, circumflex accent |
| Ë | Ë | Ë | capital e, umlaut mark |
| Ì | Ì | Ì | capital i, grave accent |
| Í | Í | Í | capital i, acute accent |
| Î | Î | Î | capital i, circumflex accent |
| Ï | Ï | Ï | capital i, umlaut mark |
| Ð | Ð | Ð | capital eth, Icelandic |
| Ñ | Ñ | Ñ | capital n, tilde |
| Ò | Ò | Ò | capital o, grave accent |
| Ó | Ó | Ó | capital o, acute accent |
| Ô | Ô | Ô | capital o, circumflex accent |
| Õ | Õ | Õ | capital o, tilde |
| Ö | Ö | Ö | capital o, umlaut mark |
| Ø | Ø | Ø | capital o, slash |
| Ù | Ù | Ù | capital u, grave accent |
| Ú | Ú | Ú | capital u, acute accent |
| Û | Û | Û | capital u, circumflex accent |
| Ü | Ü | Ü | capital u, umlaut mark |
| Ý | Ý | Ý | capital y, acute accent |
| Þ | Þ | Þ | capital THORN, Icelandic |
| ß | ß | ß | small sharp s, German |
| à | à | à | small a, grave accent |
| á | á | á | small a, acute accent |
| â | â | â | small a, circumflex accent |
| ã | ã | ã | small a, tilde |
| ä | ä | ä | small a, umlaut mark |
| å | å | å | small a, ring |
| æ | æ | æ | small ae |
| ç | ç | ç | small c, cedilla |
| è | è | è | small e, grave accent |
| é | é | é | small e, acute accent |
| ê | ê | ê | small e, circumflex accent |
| ë | ë | ë | small e, umlaut mark |
| ì | ì | ì | small i, grave accent |
| í | í | í | small i, acute accent |
| î | î | î | small i, circumflex accent |
| ï | ï | ï | small i, umlaut mark |
| ð | ð | ð | small eth, Icelandic |
| ñ | ñ | ñ | small n, tilde |
| ò | ò | ò | small o, grave accent |
| ó | ó | ó | small o, acute accent |
| ô | ô | ô | small o, circumflex accent |
| õ | õ | õ | small o, tilde |
| ö | ö | ö | small o, umlaut mark |
| ø | ø | ø | small o, slash |
| ù | ù | ù | small u, grave accent |
| ú | ú | ú | small u, acute accent |
| û | û | û | small u, circumflex accent |
| ü | ü | ü | small u, umlaut mark |
| ý | ý | ý | small y, acute accent |
| þ | þ | þ | small thorn, Icelandic |
| ÿ | ÿ | ÿ | small y, umlaut mark |
Variants of ISO-8859-1
| Character set | Description | Covers |
|---|---|---|
| ISO-8859-1 | Latin 1 | North America, Western Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean, Canada, Africa. |
| ISO-8859-2 | Latin 2 | Eastern Europe. |
| ISO-8859-3 | Latin 3 | SE Europe, Esperanto, miscellaneous others. |
| ISO-8859-4 | Latin 4 | Scandinavia/Baltics (and others not in ISO-8859-1). |
| ISO-8859-5 | Latin/Cyrillic | The languages that use a Cyrillic alphabet such as Bulgarian, Belarusian, Russian and Macedonian. |
| ISO-8859-6 | Latin/Arabic | The languages that use the Arabic alphabet. |
| ISO-8859-7 | Latin/Greek | The modern Greek language as well as mathematical symbols derived from the Greek. |
| ISO-8859-8 | Latin/Hebrew | The languages that use the Hebrew alphabet. |
| ISO-8859-9 | Latin/Turkish | The Turkish language. Same as ISO-8859-1 except Turkish characters replace Icelandic ones. |
| ISO-8859-10 | Latin/Nordic | The Nordic languages. |
| ISO-8859-15 | Latin 9 (Latin 0) | Similar to ISO-8859-1 but replaces some less common symbols with the euro sign and some other missing characters. |
Modern browsers automatically detect or fall back to UTF-8 when no encoding is specified. Legacy encodings like ISO-8859-1 are primarily supported for backward compatibility with older web pages. For new projects, always use UTF-8 to ensure full Unicode support and cross-platform consistency.
See also HTML ASCII and HTML Entities.
Practice
What does the ISO-8859-1 coding in HTML represent?