Character Statement HTML
For accurate web page display, browsers must use the correct Character Set. Common Character Sets for English speakers are UTF-8 and ISO-8859-1. UTF-8 is more universal, and may yield less problems with unexpected display of characters and problems with forms and databases.
Character Sets can be declared at the Server (fastest loading method):
htaccess file: Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
is a valid Character Set Declaration. Character Sets can be defined Windows Server as well.
Character Sets can also be included in the head section of an HTML page (the most common and easiest method):
meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"
is a valid head element entry
or Character Sets can be defined as an XML Declaration
The fastest loading method to declare a character set at the server. If you do define a character set within the head section of a page, do so as close to the top as possible.
It's considered best practice by some web development experts to declare the character set at both the document and server level.