& or & what should be used for & (ampersand) if we are using UTF-8 in an XHTML document?

html, html-entities, xhtml

Solution

Both are character references and refer to the same character (AMPERSAND, U+0026). `&` is a named or entity character reference and `&` is a numerical character reference.

In fact, `&` is actually just a substitution for `&` (see list of character entities):

<!ENTITY amp     CDATA "&#38;"   -- ampersand, U+0026 ISOnum -->

Problem

What is the difference between `&amp;` and `&#38;` for & (ampersand)? What should be used with UTF-8?

Original source