SGML Character Names

Special characters from HTML 1 and 2 include most of the accented characters used in languages other than English, and also the special characters <,>, and &, which are represented in HTML 2 by <,>, and &. In addition, the "ISO 8879 Entities" from the following lists may be used.

How to read the SGML Entity tables.

The Links below give lists of "SGML Entities" You'll find just about any character you need, including accented character, greek characters, mathematics symbols, etc. Each "entity", or character will have an entry that looks like this:
<!ENTITY alpha SDATA "[alpha ]"--=small alpha, Greek-->
This entry says that there is an SGML entity named "alpha", which represents the character known in English as "small alpha, Greek". Capitalization is important in the SGML Entity names.

To use an SGML entity on a journal page, you have to start it with an "&" and end it with a ";". So the SGML for the greek letter alpha is "α" (Leave off the quote marks!) Including an SGML entity in the journal's RTF template is a bit different. Many characters, including the greek letters, can be entered using the standard symbol fonts. A few common characters still need to be entered using SGML names. But instead of starting with an "&", start with two semicolons. So to include the character for the reduced Planck's Constant in RTF text, type ";;hbar;".

The language of the web, HTML, uses a subset of SGML. Different web browsers support different sets of SGML entities. It's a pretty good assumption that the number of entities supported will increase with time. So if you use a common SGML entity today, chances are that it will be rendered by future browsers. For example the greek letters are not widely supported. Your browser renders "α" as "&alpha". This journal uses translation routines to present images of some entities for some pages, including all published papers. This results in "α" being rendered as "".

Sometimes, the supprt for an entity varies from browser to browser. The SGML entity "µ" is an example. It represents the character meaning a millionth of an SI unit. Your browser renders "µ" as "µ". NCSA Mosaic and its derivatives (MSIE) do this correctly, early versions of Netscape didn't. Another way to represent this character in HTML is "µ", rendered by your browser as "µ". The greek letter µ (mu) has a separate SGML entity, "μ", which is not widely supported yet. Easy enough?

MIJ-NSR also supports a few special characters not included in the ISO list, &onebar; and &twobar;, which are rendered as and