HTML & CSS Interview Question #29

What does the meta charset element do?

Forms, Validation, Metadata, Media, Responsive Images & Accessibility Junior Beginner

Quick Interview Answer

The charset metadata declares the character encoding used by the HTML document. UTF-8 is the standard choice for modern web pages because it supports a very large range of characters and languages.

Detailed Explanation

The charset metadata declares the character encoding used by the HTML document. UTF-8 is the standard choice for modern web pages because it supports a very large range of characters and languages.

The declaration should appear early in the head so the browser can decode the document correctly before processing substantial content.

Code Example

<head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8">
    <title>Interview Preparation</title>
</head>