title: HTML Entities: When to Use Decimal vs. Hex
body: <p>Is there a good rule of thumb for when to use decimal vs. hexadecimal notation for HTML entities?</p>
  
  <p>For example, a non-breaking hyphen is written in decimal as <code>&amp;#8209;</code> and in hex as <code>&amp;#x2011;</code>.</p>
  
  <p>This <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/a/17431558/723007">answer</a> says that hexadecimal is for Unicode; does that mean hex should be used if you're using the <code>&lt;meta charset="utf-8"&gt;</code> tag in the document <code>&lt;head&gt;</code>?</p>
  
  <p>Occasionally, I will notice entity characters mistakenly rendered instead of the entities they represent -- for example, <code>&amp;amp;</code> appearing (instead of an ampersand) in an email subject line or RSS headline. Is either hex or decimal better for avoiding this?</p>
  
  <p>One last consideration: can using hex or decimal affect the rendering clarity (crispness) of the character?</p>