Why do computers sometimes change special characters like “&” into “&” or “ ”

Question

Why do computers sometimes change special characters like “&” into “&” or “ ”

In: 77

Answer 1

You want to write the symbol < but the browser thinks that you are trying to write something special and everything after that character is broken and not correct anymore. So with the special code starting with & for the symbol < (& l t ;), you are writing < and at the same time you are telling the browser that you just want the symbol written for the user to be read and that you don’t want the special symbol that will broke everything.

Now you are seeing < but in reality it is an & l t ;. That’s also the reason why sometimes when you copy the text you copy the special char code and not what you are reading.