Tutorial
How To Set UTF-8 Using meta charset in HTML
Introduction
UTF-8 is the most most common character encoding on the web. You can set UTF-8 encoding and other formats using the <meta charset> tag in HTML5.
Prerequisites
- A general knowledge of HTML5. For a comprehensive review of the HTML5 markup language, explore our series, How To Build a Website in HTML.
Using the <meta charset> HTML tag to set UTF-8
The first element after the opening <head> tag of your documents should be a <meta charset> tag to define the character set in use. The UTF-8 charset is the right choice for the modern web. Here’s the markup for it:
<meta charset="UTF-8">
This is how the charset definition works in HTML5
Conclusion
<meta charset> is only one of many common tags in HTML5.
For a more comprehensive review of the HTML5 markup language, explore our series, How To Build a Website in HTML.
Thanks for learning with the DigitalOcean Community. Check out our offerings for compute, storage, networking, and managed databases.
About the author(s)
This textbox defaults to using Markdown to format your answer.
You can type !ref in this text area to quickly search our full set of tutorials, documentation & marketplace offerings and insert the link!
Become a contributor for community
Get paid to write technical tutorials and select a tech-focused charity to receive a matching donation.
DigitalOcean Documentation
Full documentation for every DigitalOcean product.
Resources for startups and SMBs
The Wave has everything you need to know about building a business, from raising funding to marketing your product.
The developer cloud
Scale up as you grow — whether you're running one virtual machine or ten thousand.
Get started for free
Sign up and get $200 in credit for your first 60 days with DigitalOcean.*
*This promotional offer applies to new accounts only.