title: Should we HTML-encode special characters before storing them in the database?
body: <p>I use MySQL to store data and my web pages are all encoded as UTF-8. I have a lot of Portuguese characters such as <code>ç</code> and <code>õ</code> and I'm wondering if I should HTML-escape them before storage.</p>
  
  <p>Should we store <code>&amp;</code> as <code>&amp;amp;</code>, for example? And why (not)? What are the advantages and disadvantages / best practices?</p>