Are <META> keywords language/DOCTYPE dependent ?

W

Wladimir Borsov

Assume I declare at the top of a HTML page:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">

This refers to english HTML content/syntax. Later then I declare:

<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT=".... ... .... ">

Should the keywords also be in english? or is it possible to enter words from other language
(and with other language specific chars like german umlaute, french accents, spanisch question marks,...)?

Do visiting search engines understand a mix of words from multiple languages ?

Can I enter speical chars like the german "Ä" directly or do I have to type &Auml; inside the META-Tags ?

Wladi
 
T

Toby A Inkster

Wladimir said:
Assume I declare at the top of a HTML page:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">

This refers to english HTML content/syntax.
Click to expand...

You believe wrong. It does not specify a (human) language at all. That's
not what DOCTYPEs are for.

To specify the language of the document do one or more of:

1. Set the "Content-Language" HTTP header.
2. Use a http-equiv="Content-Language" <meta> tag.
3. Set the lang attribute on the said:
Can I enter speical chars like the german "Ä" directly or do I have to
type &Auml; inside the META-Tags ?
Click to expand...

This is an unrelated matter and has to do with the character set specified
on the page -- not the language. To specify which character set you are
using, do on of more of the following:

1. Add a charset attribute to the "Content-Type" HTTP header.
2. Use a http-equiv="Content-Type" <meta> tag and specify a charset
attribute similarly.

However, entities and character references, such as "&Auml;" should work
all the time: doesn't matter which charset you're using.
 

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