Comments With HTML Code Confuse Blog Owners

Some blog owners see encoded special characters, in Blogger dashboard displays - and do not understand why they are there.

I recently noticed that the comments, that I view in my Blogger dashboard page, have like a series of numbers and symbols in some of the comments.

This owner is looking at comments, displayed in the Dashboard Comments pages ("Published", "Awaiting moderation", and "Spam"), which right now may contain strange character sequences.

The "HTML entity codes" for special characters, like ampersand, apostrophe, and quote marks, are HTML code - that will probably be with us, forever. Blogger blog content (like many other blogs and websites) uses HTML - and those characters have syntactical importance. Using them in blog content, unencoded, causes problems with browser operation.

Blogger has had various problems with displaying special characters, like ampersand (&), apostrophe ('), and quote marks ("), for many years.

Long ago, I published my recipes blog, titled "Chuck's Kitchen".

Seeing the blog title displayed a few times, in comments, in the dashboard - and even in the blog header - as "Chuck's Kitchen" confused my readers, with the apostrophe displayed as an HTML entity. I figured the simplest solution was simply to compromise - and accept a non grammatical title of "Chucks Kitchen".

What I saw, in the dashboard Comments wizard, recently. Look at my comment, of "10:17 AM".

What we now see, in the post comment. Compare the above, with my published comment, of "10:17 AM"



You are allowed to use special characters, like ampersand (&), apostrophe ('), greater than (>), less than (<), and quote marks ("), and others, if you like, in your blog - but you will occasionally see confusion from your readers - as the confusion recently seen in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue.

I recently noticed that the comments that I view in my Blogger Design page have like a series of numbers and symbols. I don't know why they are there or how to get rid of them.

You can't really get rid of them, you need to just learn to ignore them. Right now, only you see them.

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Some #Blogger blog owners see comments, displayed in the dashboard Comments pages, displayed with HTML entity coded characters. They are odd looking - but right now, they only display this way, in the dashboard pages.

When published, the blog will display the special characters properly.