Explain the use of the <meta charset> Tag

The <meta charset> tag in HTML is used to specify the character encoding for the document. Character encoding defines how characters are represented and interpreted by browsers. Properly setting the character encoding is crucial for displaying text correctly, especially when using non-ASCII characters or different language scripts.

Syntax:

HTML




<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
 
<head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8">
    <title>Document Title</title>
</head>
 
<body>
    <!-- Your content goes here -->
</body>
 
</html>


Features

  • Character Encoding: Specifies the character encoding for the document. Common values include “UTF-8” and “ISO-8859-1”.
  • UTF-8 Standard: “UTF-8” is widely used and supports a broad range of characters from various languages and scripts.
  • Browser Interpretation: Ensures that browsers interpret the text content correctly, preventing issues like garbled or misinterpreted characters.