HTML charset Attribute

Definition

The charset attribute specifies the character encoding for the HTML document.

Applicable Elements

The charset Attribute can be used with the following elements:

<meta>

HTML `<meta>` `charset` Attribute

The <meta> tag specifies metadata, or information, about a HTML document that cannot otherwise be expressed using the <title>, <base>, <link>, <style>, or <script> tags.

The charset attribute specifies the character encoding for the HTML document when used in the <meta> element.

Syntax

<meta charset="UTF-8">

Usage

There should only be one <meta> element with a charset attribute in a document.
The <meta> element should be located in the <head>.
The charset attribute accepts space-separated character encodings. Common values include:
- UTF-8 - Unicode character encoding.
- ISO-8859-1 - Latin alphabet character encoding.
The HTML5 specification recommends UTF-8 as it avoids unexpected results on form submissions and URL encoding.
You should keep the use of attributes and associated values defined on the <head> element to a minimum. This allows for proper detection of the character encoding declaration (e.g. <meta charset="utf-8"/>) within the first 1024 bytes.

Values

The HTML5 recommended value is:

UTF-8

But you can use any character encoding set. See here for a full list.

Examples

The following example shows a <meta> element that sets the the document charset to the UTF-8 character encoding:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8">
    <title>HTML Title Element goes here.</title>
</head>
<body>
    <h1>Displayed Page Title</h1>
    <p>The main content of your page goes here.</p>
</body>
</html>

Specification

The charset HTML specification for the <meta> element is as follows:

HTML Living Standard Specification

Browser Support

The charset attribute has the following browser support:

Desktop

	Chrome	Edge	Firefox	IE	Opera	Safari
`<meta>`	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
`<script>`	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

Mobile

	Android Webview	Chrome Android	Firefox Android	Opera Android	iOS Safari	Samsung Internet
`<meta>`	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
`<script>`	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes