| Potentially confusing or technically problematic characters | |
| Category | coded form (direct form) | Notes |
|---|
| Miscellany | & (&)< (<)> (>)[ ([)] (])' (')| (|) | Use these characters directly in general, unless they interfere with HTML or wiki markup. Apostrophes and pipe symbols can alternatively be coded with{{'}} and{{!}} or{{pipe}}. See alsocharacter-substitution templates andWP:ENCODE. |
| Greek letters | Α (Α)Β (Β)Ε (Ε)Ζ (Ζ)Η (Η)Ι (Ι)Κ (Κ)Μ (Μ)Ν (Ν)Ο (Ο)Ρ (Ρ)Τ (Τ)Υ (Υ)Χ (Χ)κ (κ)ο (ο)ρ (ρ) | In isolation, use coded forms to avoid confusion with similar-looking Latin letters; in a Greek word or text, use the direct characters. |
| Quotes | ‘ (‘)’ (’)‚ (‚)“ (“)” (”)„ („)´ (´)′ (′)″ (″)` (`) | Can be confused with straight quotes (" and'), commas, and with one another.MOS:STRAIGHT generally requires conversion to straight quotes, except when discussing the characters themselves or sometimes with non-English languages. See next row for prime characters. |
| Apostrophe-like | ' `′ ʹ ʻ ʼ ʽ ʾ ʼ ʽ ʻ ʼ | |
| Dashes, minuses, hyphens | – (–)— (—)− (−)- (hyphen)­ (soft hyphen) | Can be confused with one another. For dashes and minuses, both forms are used (as well as{{endash}} and{{emdash}}).Soft hyphens should always be coded with the HTML entity or template. Plain hyphens are usually direct, though at times{{hyphen}} may be preferable (e.g.Help:CS1#Pages). SeeMOS:DASH,MOS:SHY, andMOS:MINUS for guidelines. |
| Whitespace |     ‍‌ | In direct form these are nearly impossible to distinguish from a normal space. See alsoMOS:NBSP. |
| Non-printing | ‎‏ | In direct form these are nearly impossible to identify. SeeMOS:RTL. |
| Mathematics-related | ∧ (∧)∨ (∨)⟨ (⟨)⟩ (⟩) | Can be confused withx^v<>. In some cases TeX markup is preferred to Unicode characters; seeMOS:FORMULA. Use{{angbr}} instead of⟨) / (⟩) |
| Dots | ⋅ (⋅)· (·)• (•) | Can be confused with one another.Interpuncts (·) are common in horizontal lists and to indicate syllables in words.Multiplication dots (⋅) are used for math. In practice, the dots are used directly instead of the HTML entities. |
