Help:Displaying Special Characters

General Punctuation
Tick or Checkmark  &#10003;

HTML vs TeX
There are several forms for displaying special characters or mathematical expressions:

Before trying markup for producing special characters, it should be noted that, as this comparison table shows, sometimes similar results can be achieved in HTML.

For a comprehensive set of help pages on, see Help:LaTeX Symbol Tables for Wikieducator

The use of HTML instead of TeX is still under discussion. The arguments either way can be summarised as follows.

Pros of HTML

 * 1) In-line HTML formulae always align properly with the rest of the HTML text.
 * 2) The formula&rsquo;s background and font size match the rest of HTML contents and the appearance respects CSS and browser settings while the typeface is conveniently altered to help you identify formulae.
 * 3) Pages using HTML code for formulae will load faster and they will create less clutter on your hard disk.
 * 4) Formulae typeset with HTML code will be accessible to client-side script links (a.k.a. scriptlets).
 * 5) The display of a formula entered using mathematical templates can be conveniently altered by modifying the templates involved; this modification will affect all relevant formulae without any manual intervention.
 * 6) The HTML code, if entered diligently, will contain all semantic information to transform the equation back to TeX or any other code as needed.  It can even contain differences TeX does not normally catch, e.g.   for the imaginary unit and   for an arbitrary index variable.

Pros of TeX

 * 1) TeX is semantically superior to HTML. In TeX, " " means "mathematical variable $$x$$", whereas in HTML " " could mean anything. Information has been irrevocably lost.
 * 2) On the other hand, if you encode the same formula as " ", you get the same visual result  and no information is lost.  This requires diligence and more typing that could make the formula harder to understand as you type it.  However, since there are far more readers than editors, this effort is worth considering.
 * 3) TeX has been specifically designed for typesetting formulae, so input is easier and more natural if you are accustomed to it, and output is more aesthetically pleasing if you focus on a single formula rather than on the whole containing page.
 * 4) One consequence of point 1 is that TeX code can be transformed into HTML, but not vice-versa. This means that on the server side we can always transform a formula, based on its complexity and location within the text, user preferences, type of browser, etc.  Therefore, where possible, all the benefits of HTML can be retained, together with the benefits of TeX.  It is true that the current situation is not ideal, but that is not a good reason to drop information/contents.  It is more a reason to help improve the situation.
 * 5) Another consequence of point 1 is that TeX can be converted to MathML for browsers which support it, thus keeping its semantics and allowing the rendering to be better suited for the reader&rsquo;s graphic device.
 * 6) When writing in TeX, editors need not worry about whether this or that version of this or that browser supports this or that HTML entity. The burden of these decisions is put on the software. This does not hold for HTML formulae, which can easily end up being rendered wrongly or differently from the editor&rsquo;s intentions on a different browser.
 * 7) More importantly, the serif font used for rendering formulae is browser-dependent and it may be missing some important glyphs.  While the browser generally capable to substitute a matching glyph from a different font family, it need not be the case for combined glyphs (compare &lsquo;  &rsquo; and &lsquo; a&#773; &rsquo;).
 * 8) TeX is the preferred text formatting language of most professional mathematicians, scientists, and engineers. It is easier to persuade them to contribute if they can write in TeX.