HTML Encode for Email Templates — Safe Special Characters
Quick Answer: Email clients have inconsistent HTML rendering. Encode special characters to entities: & as &, non-breaking spaces as , and special symbols as numeric entities. This ensures correct rendering across Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail, and other clients.
FAQ
Why do special characters break in emails?
Email clients parse HTML differently. Unencoded & can be interpreted as the start of an entity. Unencoded < may be stripped as a potential tag. Encoding prevents misinterpretation.
What characters should I encode in emails?
Encode: & (&), non-ASCII characters (use numeric entities like ’ for curly quotes), and any character that might be misinterpreted by email client HTML parsers.