Some help may be found at BS: HTML CHARACTERS: REDACT/REDUX . Some idiot posted the full set of "standard" html characters, so you can open the above thread and look at what you see - and what you don't see - on your own browser.

Bill D. -- the infinity symbol can be coded as ∞ and will display ok in my IE, but will not print directly from my IE. If I copy and paste the html page into Word, it doesn't display in Word - but prints ok to my LJ printer. (At least that was the case with Times New Roman set on both IE5 and in Word.)

One of the other HTML practice/discussion threads (3 to 6 months ago?) showed a way to use the html "span" operator(?) to put an "overbar" or macron over text, but I apparently didn't bookmark it.

The HTML standards define certain characters that are "named entities" which can be coded using the &name; format. All of the "named entities" defined in HTML 3.0 are ANSI characters. "Character values" for the standard named entities are from decimal 32 through 255. This range does not include any macron characters, and does not include the above &inif; "∞" character.

When your browser gets a page, it does not get A,B,C, and such. It gets character codes. If the page contains a an entity name, it is up to your browser to replace it with a character glyph. For most characters, what is actually received is a number that identifies a character - ASCII, ANSI, or UNICODE. As far as the browser is concerned - the number is the character. Your browser uses whatever font is enabled to substitute character glyphs or pictures, for each character.

If you don't have a font that knows how to draw the picture you will not see the character. If you use "fancy stuff" - even if you can see it, persons reading your post must also have a font installed that is able to draw the character.

More (perhaps) to follow.

John