The @charset
CSS at-rule specifies the character encoding used in the style sheet. It must be the first element in the style sheet and not be preceded by any character; as it is not a nested statement, it cannot be used inside conditional group at-rules. If several @charset
at-rules are defined, only the first one is used, and it cannot be used inside a style
attribute on an HTML element or inside the <style>
element where the character set of the HTML page is relevant.
@charset "utf-8";
This at-rule is useful when using non-ASCII characters in some CSS properties, like content
.
As there are several ways to define the character encoding of a style sheet, the browser will try the following methods in the following order (and stop as soon as one yields a result) :
- The value of the Unicode byte-order character placed at the beginning of the file.
- The value given by the
charset
attribute of theContent-Type:
HTTP header or the equivalent in the protocol used to serve the style sheet. - The
@charset
CSS at-rule. - Use the character encoding defined by the referring document: the
charset
attribute of the<link>
element. This method is obsoleted in HTML5 and must not be used. - Assume that the document is UTF-8
Syntax
@charset "UTF-8"; @charset "iso-8859-15";
where:
- charset
- Is a
<string>
denoting the character encoding to be used. It must be the name of a web-safe character encoding defined in the IANA-registry, and must be double-quoted, following exactly one space character (U+0020), and immediately terminated with a semicolon. If several names are associated with an encoding, only the one marked with preferred must be used.
Formal syntax
@charset "<charset>";
Examples
Valid and invalid charset declarations
@charset "UTF-8"; /* Set the encoding of the style sheet to Unicode UTF-8 */
@charset 'iso-8859-15'; /* Invalid, wrong quoting style used */
@charset "UTF-8"; /* Invalid, more than one space */
@charset "UTF-8"; /* Invalid, there is a character (a space) before the at-rule */
@charset UTF-8; /* Invalid, without ' or ", the charset is not a CSS <string>
*/
Specifications
Specification | Status | Comment |
---|---|---|
CSS Level 2 (Revision 1) The definition of '@charset' in that specification. |
Recommendation | Initial definition |
Browser compatibility
Desktop | Mobile | |||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
@charset | Chrome Full support 2 | Edge Full support 12 | Firefox
Full support
1.5
| IE
Full support
5.5
| Opera Full support 9 | Safari Full support 4 | WebView Android Full support 2 | Chrome Android Full support 18 | Firefox Android Full support 4 | Opera Android Full support 10.1 | Safari iOS Full support 4 | Samsung Internet Android Full support 1.0 |
Legend
- Full support
- Full support
- See implementation notes.
- See implementation notes.
See also
- Character set glossary entry
- Unicode glossary entry