Markup vs Unicode

2003-08-17T18:51:00Z

HTML 4.0.1: Although Unicode specifies special characters that deal with text direction, HTML offers higher-level markup constructs that do the same thing: the dir attribute (do not confuse with the DIR element) and the BDO element. Thus, to express a Hebrew quotation, it is more intuitive to write

<Q lang="he" dir="rtl">...a Hebrew quotation...</Q>

than the equivalent with Unicode references:

&#x202B;&#x05F4;...a Hebrew quotation...&#x05F4;&#x202C;