
Technology
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       Location: FCPS (IAK Support Services) | Want to put a special math symbol or other obscure character into a post? Here's how...
There are special characters in Web pages called HTML entities. Each has its own unique code which you type in; when the page is rendered the code will be replaced by the actual character. All of these HTML entities begin with an ampersand (&) and end with a semicolon(;). Between the two is a sort of abbreviation of the symbol. Let's look at an example.
A common symbol you might want to use is the radical (square root) symbol which looks like this: v. In order to get that to appear, I had to type in the code, which is & radic;. (In this example, I put a space between the opening ampersand and the abbreviation -- in actual practice you would not do that. I had to put the space in; otherwise you would have seen the symbol itself and not the code!
Here are some others you might find useful:
| Symbol | Abbreviation (Type & the abbreviation ; with no spaces) | | √ | radic | | ∞ | infin | | ≈ | asymp | | ≠ | ne | | ÷ | divide | | π | pi | | ≤ | le | | ≥ | ge |
Find more here: http://htmlhelp.com/reference/html40/entities/symbols.html
Note: As I just discovered, the only snag in this is that MegaBBS will screw up your entities if you go back and edit a post later. If you have to edit it after inserting entities, you might have to re-type them. Sorry about that.
Enjoy! |