On 4 Nov 2002, at 14:39, Steve Mount wrote:

> I cannot imagine using &#3F; instead of simply "?" in a
> document.  Who has the time to maintain all of those
> symbols?  In my seven years of doing this stuff, I've
> never have even thought to try.
> 
> My general rule of thumb is that everything I can type on
> my keyboard is a valid character (with the obvious
> exceptions of < and >).  I only go to entity names when it
> is outside that range, and only to entity numbers when my
> references tell me the names are not standard.
> 
> I tried to check the W3C docs for more "official"
> guidance, but I couldn't find it quickly (other than a
> list of entities at
> http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/sgml/entities.html) so
> I'll leave it to a standards guru to fill us in.

No standards guru, but ISTRC that quote marks in text 
should be as entities ... something about validation, but 
I do it because it differentiates a quote mark in an 
attribute assignment (color="chartreuse") from a quote 
mark in text. Makes it easier to use search and replace 
to make mass changes.

David
dvjones(at)ksbe.edu
 

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