HTML Character Sets
Character sets determine how the bytes that represent the text of your HTML document are translated to readable characters. Windows Internet Explorer interprets the bytes in your document according to the applied character set translations. It interprets numeric or hex character references ("〹" or "ሴ") as ISO10646 code points, consistent with the Unicode Standard, version 2.0, and independent of the chosen character set. Named entities ("&") are displayed independently of the chosen character set as well. The display of an arbitrary numeric character reference requires the existence of a font that is able to display that particular character on the user's system. Accordingly, the content in the first column of the following tables may not render as expected on all systems.