Is the method of encoding emails with particular characters and symbols supplying you with a wrestle?
It’s an issue many electronic mail builders cope with, particularly if some textual content for the physique of the e-mail will get pasted in from a phrase processor. Symbols and characters might also trigger show points in emails for those who’re coding emails for various languages.
Setting the content-type is crucial issue related to how electronic mail shoppers show textual content that features particular characters, together with non-Latin-based languages reminiscent of these spoken in Asia in addition to Hebrew, Arabic, and Greek. However electronic mail builders may take issues into their very own palms when it is sensible.
In the event you’re seeing pink X’s, query marks in bins, or random funky characters that shouldn’t be in your emails, we’re going to take a better take a look at what’s occurring and methods to repair it. Let’s begin by answering some key questions.
What’s character encoding?
Character encoding is the method of writing or coding particular symbols in HTML so they seem as meant whatever the system, internet browser, or electronic mail consumer. That is achieved by assigning a quantity or code to Once you don’t have correct electronic mail encoding, that’s whenever you see surprising symbols and empty bins.
A particular group of characters is contained in a personality set (charset=” “ in HTML code). Every of these characters is represented by a bit of code that’s used as a key to breed the character on a display.
The Unicode encoding referred to as UTF-8 is the most well-liked and dependable approach to outline particular characters and symbols on the internet and in emails in addition to different types of digital communication. You possibly can set your whole electronic mail to make use of UTF-8 character encoding, which we’ll take a look at later.
However first, we should always point out there’s a technique to verify all particular characters and symbols in your emails show as meant.
Bulletproof HTML electronic mail encoding
If you wish to be 100% sure that every one textual content renders appropriately within the topic line and physique of your emails, the most secure answer is to transform particular characters and symbols to their HTML entities.
As you seemingly already know, practically each image and particular character has its personal entity identify and quantity. When positioned within the code, the entity produces the image or character.
These entities at all times start with an ampersand and finish with a semicolon. For instance, the HTML entity is used for non-breaking areas. Utilizing HTML entities for better and fewer than symbols (< and >) could be useful as a result of they could possibly be confused with tags within the code.
Listed here are some frequent particular characters and their HTML entities:
| Character | Entity identify | Entity quantity |
| & ampersand | & | & |
| ® registered trademark | ® | ® |
| £ British pound | £ | £ |
| ¡ inverted exclamation mark | ¡ | ¡ |
There are additionally HTML entities for electronic mail encoding that entail symbols from non-Latin languages reminiscent of Chinese language or Greek. Characters from these languages can be represented by Unicode. Listed here are just a few examples:
| Character | Entity quantity | Unicode |
| 光 Chinese language image for mild | 光 | U+5149 |
| א Hebrew letter aleph | א | U+05D0 |
| Δ Greek letter delta | Δ | U+0394 |
| ॐ Sanskrit image for Om | ॐ | U+0950 |
Even for those who don’t have a world electronic mail advertising and marketing technique, you by no means know when you might want to incorporate an emblem by electronic mail encoding of particular characters.
After all, for those who plan to transform particular characters in an HTML electronic mail manually you’ll want to determine the HTML entity. Fortunately, we’ve received a free software for that!
Sinch E mail on Acid constructed an HTML character converter to make your job somewhat simpler. Simply paste in your particular characters and symbols, hit a button, and get the HTML entities it’s essential convert them within the electronic mail physique.
Strive the Character Converter
What’s content-type?
When taking over the duty of electronic mail encoding, you too can inform browsers and electronic mail shoppers the way you anticipate them to interpret various kinds of characters by setting the content-type. Even in case you are changing particular person particular characters to HTML entities, it’s nonetheless good to outline the content-type of your electronic mail.
You set the content-type by selecting the suitable character set. The 2 most typical character units are UTF-8 and ISO-8859-1. Nonetheless, in nearly all circumstances, you ought to be utilizing UTF-8 as an electronic mail’s content-type.
Why is UTF-8 greatest for character encoding in electronic mail?
Whereas there are various methods to encode characters, UTF-8 has develop into a global customary because of how complete it’s. UTF-8 is able to encoding greater than 1,112,000 completely different characters. That features each written language, math symbols, musical notations, and even the emojis utilized in electronic mail advertising and marketing.
The issue with utilizing the ISO-8859-1 character set is that it solely accounts for Latin characters and symbols, which excludes many Japanese symbols and glyphs. The picture beneath exhibits how such characters fail to show appropriately utilizing ISO-8859-1 in comparison with UTF-8
The consequence on the precise features a bunch of jumbled textual content, which is the ISO-8859-1 interpretation of the symbols. Discover, nonetheless, when the HTML entity is used, particular characters show appropriately for each UTF-8 and ISO-8859-1. That’s what makes that technique foolproof.
The place to designate content-type in emails
In the event you’re growing a web site, you possibly can designate content-type or specify the character set in a meta tag utilizing code like this:
<meta http-equiv="Content material-Sort" content material="textual content/html charset=UTF-8" />
However as you might bear in mind, there are some main variations between internet and electronic mail growth. And that is yet one more one. E mail shoppers will ignore the content-type within the meta-tag. As an alternative, electronic mail shoppers at all times discuss with what content-type is ready within the electronic mail header.
The e-mail header offers a bunch of technical details about the message, together with the date, sender identify (from:) and recipient (to:) in addition to issues like electronic mail authentication particulars. When an electronic mail consumer sees the character set UTF-8 outlined within the head, it is aware of easy methods to interpret characters all through the message.
Find out how to set content-type in electronic mail headers
Beneath you’ll see a code snippet of a selected electronic mail header that features the content-type set to UTF-8 on the backside:
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2021 12:45:55 -0700 To: take a look at@take a look at.com From: testfrom@take a look at.com Topic: UTF-8 Message-ID: <e06deabc923f3378e4b237a20be324cc@www.take a look at.com> X-Precedence: 3 X-Mailer: EOAMailer 5.0.0 MIME-Model: 1.0 Content material-Switch-Encoding: 8bit Content material-Sort: textual content/html; charset="UTF-8"
Setting content-type and defining a personality set is essential for the readability and accessibility of your emails. It ensures nothing breaks the studying sample for a subscriber, whether or not the subscriber is studying the e-mail herself or utilizing a display reader with emails.
That’s why Sinch E mail on Acid consists of the power to set or change the content-type within the accessibility settings of the Marketing campaign Precheck automated workflow. With the clicking of a button, the platform makes certain the precise code is added to the e-mail header.
As a result of electronic mail service suppliers (ESPs) set content-type within the header, we have now one other layer of complexity added to our electronic mail growth. If essential, contact your ESP and ask them what content-type they set within the header when sending the emails. As soon as you understand the content-type, use that worth in your HTML meta tag when designing the e-mail.
In any other case, you possibly can at all times depend on the bulletproof technique of changing particular characters and symbols to their corresponding HTML entity.
E mail consumer help for content-type
Another excuse to completely use UTF-8 for electronic mail encoding is that it’s broadly supported by main electronic mail shoppers. Practically each web page on the web makes use of UTF-8 for encoding as do electronic mail shoppers.
We ran assessments to see what shoppers did when the content-type was specified within the header and located that Gmail was the one outlier. It doesn’t matter what was designated within the electronic mail header, Gmail is the one consumer that robotically converts your textual content to UTF-8. That features in iOS when individuals use Gmail on iPhones or iPads.
One fascinating motion we observed: The net-based shoppers convert your textual content to the content-type character set earlier than displaying it in an online browser. We have been in a position to examine this by viewing what content-type they have been setting of their meta tags. Because it seems, most of them are utilizing UTF-8.
Is your electronic mail encoding working?
In case your electronic mail advertising and marketing campaigns have a tendency to incorporate textual content for a wide range of languages, particular characters, or symbols, how will you be assured they’re displaying appropriately.
The reply? You’ve received to run assessments and take a look at electronic mail previews to know for certain.
When you might ship handbook assessments to various kinds of inboxes, gadgets, and browsers, E mail on Acid offers a streamlined approach to take a look at your electronic mail encoding and all kinds of different components. That features deliverability, inbox show, Outlook rendering points, darkish mode emails, and extra.
E mail on Acid’s mission is to simplify the complexities of electronic mail advertising and marketing. That’s why we create instruments just like the helpful HTML character converter. And, it’s why we’re trusted by electronic mail geeks around the globe.
Strive the Character Converter
This publish was up to date in February 2022. It was additionally up to date in January 2019 and February 2017 and first revealed in 2011.
Creator: The E mail on Acid Staff
The E mail on Acid content material workforce is made up of digital entrepreneurs, content material creators, and straight-up electronic mail geeks.
Join with us on LinkedIn, comply with us on Fb, and tweet at @EmailonAcid on Twitter for extra candy stuff and nice convos on electronic mail advertising and marketing.
Creator: The E mail on Acid Staff
The E mail on Acid content material workforce is made up of digital entrepreneurs, content material creators, and straight-up electronic mail geeks.
Join with us on LinkedIn, comply with us on Fb, and tweet at @EmailonAcid on Twitter for extra candy stuff and nice convos on electronic mail advertising and marketing.
