UTF-8 is the most commonly used character encoding in HTML because it represents all characters in the Unicode standard while maintaining backward compatibility with ASCII. It ensures that text on web pages is displayed correctly on different devices and platforms. UTF-8 becomes the standard because it is efficient and flexible to use 1 byte for common English characters to keep the file size smaller. For more complex characters such as emojis or non-Latin scripts, use up to 4 bytes. This makes it suitable for global websites. Most modern browser servers and tools expect UTF-8 by default. Therefore, using it can avoid problems such as garbled code or missing characters. To set UTF-8 in HTML files, use section. The charset="UTF-8"> tag ensures that the meta tag is placed in the early stages of
, preferably immediately after theUTF-8 is the most common character encoding used in HTML because it can represent every character in the Unicode standard while remaining backward compatible with ASCII. It ensures that text on a webpage displays correctly across different devices and platforms.

Why UTF-8 Is the Standard for HTML Pages
UTF-8 became the standard because it's efficient and flexible. It uses one byte for common English characters, keeping file sizes small, and up to four bytes for more complex characters like emojis or symbols from non-Latin scripts. This makes it ideal for global websites. Most modern browsers, servers, and tools expect UTF-8 by default, so using it avoids display issues like scrambled text or missing characters.
How to Set UTF-8 in an HTML File
To use UTF-8 in an HTML document, you need to declare it in the section using the
<meta charset="UTF-8">
tag. Here's how it should look:

<!DOCTYPE html> <html lang="en"> <head> <meta charset="UTF-8"> <title>Page Title</title> </head> <body> <!-- Content goes here --> </body> </html>
- Make sure the
meta
tag is placed early in the, preferably right after the
<title></title>
tag. - The
lang
attribute in thetag helps browsers and screen readers interpret the language of the page.
- Also, make sure your text editor or IDE is saving the file using UTF-8 encoding.
What Happens If You Don't Use UTF-8
If you skip setting UTF-8 or use an outdated encoding like ISO-8859-1, you may run into several issues:
- Characters like “é”, “Japanese”, or “?" might show up as strange symbols or question marks.
- Users in different regions might see broken text, which hurts usability.
- Search engines may have trouble indexing content correctly.
- Form submissions with non-English characters can get corrupted or misinterpreted.
These problems can be hard to catch if you're only testing in one language or region, but they can cause real issues once your site goes global.

When You Might Use a Different Encoding
In most cases, UTF-8 is the best choice. However, there are a few rare situations where you might consider something else:
- If you're working on a legacy system that only supports older encodings like Shift_JIS for Japanese or GBK for Chinese.
- If you're optimizing for extremely limited environments (like embedded systems), where using a fixed-width encoding might be simpler.
Still, even in those cases, moving to UTF-8 is usually better in the long run for compatibility and future-proofing.
Basically that's it.
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