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# HTML Character Sets * * * To display an HTML page correctly, the browser must know which character set (character encoding) to use. * * * ## HTML Character Sets What is the correct character encoding in HTML? **The default character encoding in HTML5 is UTF-8.** This was not always the case. The character encoding for the early web was ASCII. Later, from HTML 2.0 to HTML 4.01, ISO-8859-1 was established as the standard. With the advent of XML and HTML5, UTF-8 finally arrived, solving a multitude of character encoding problems. Here is a brief overview of the character encoding standards. * * * ## In the Beginning: ASCII Computer information (numbers, letters, images) is stored in electronics as binary 1s and 0s (01000101). To standardize the storage of alphanumeric characters, ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) was created. It defined a unique 7-bit binary number for each stored character, supporting digits 0-9, uppercase/lowercase English letters (a-z, A-Z), and some special characters like ! $ + - ( ) @ . Because ASCII uses one byte (7 bits for the character, 1 bit for transmission parity control), it can only represent 128 different characters. 32 of these characters are reserved for other control purposes. The biggest drawback of ASCII is that it excludes non-English letters. ASCII is still widely used today, especially in large computer systems. For a deeper look at ASCII, see the (#). * * * ## In Windows: ANSI ANSI (also known as Windows-1252) was the default character set in Windows 95 and earlier Windows systems. ANSI is an extension of ASCII, adding international characters. It uses a full byte (8 bits) to represent 256 different characters. Since ANSI became the default character set in Windows, all browsers support ANSI. For a deeper look at ANSI, see the (#). * * * ## In HTML 4: ISO-8859-1 Because most countries use characters beyond ASCII, the default character encoding was changed to ISO-8859-1 in the HTML 2.0 standard. ISO-8859-1 is an extension of ASCII, adding international characters. Like ANSI, it uses a full byte (8 bits) to represent 256 different characters. |  | When a browser detects ISO-8859-1 on a web page, it usually defaults to ANSI, because ANSI is basically equivalent to ISO-8859-1 except for ANSI having 32 extra characters. | | --- | If an HTML 4 web page uses a character set other than ISO-8859-1, it must be specified in the tag, as shown below: ## Example |  | The default character set in HTML5 is UTF-8. All HTML 4 processors support UTF-8, and all HTML5 and XML processors support UTF-8 and UTF-16. | | --- | For a deeper look at ISO-8859-1, see the (#). * * * ## In HTML5: Unicode (UTF-8) Because the character sets listed above are limited and incompatible in multilingual environments, the Unicode Consortium developed the Unicode Standard. The Unicode Standard covers (almost) all characters, punctuation, and symbols. Unicode makes text processing, storage, and transport independent of platforms and languages. **The default character encoding in HTML5 is UTF-8.** For a deeper look at Unicode (UTF-8), see the (#). (#)[](#) [ByteArk Coding Plan supports mainstream large models like Doubao, GLM, DeepSeek, Kimi, MiniMax, etc., officially supplied and stable. Configuration Guide ¥9.9/month Subscribe Now](https://maas.xfyun.cn/modelSquare?ch=maas_lm_l2E)