Special characters like ←, <, † and é are 'escaped' in HTML: they are written in a different (longer) form -or encoded- so that they can be interpreted by browsers in the correct way. For an overview of all the special characters in HTML, see the HTML character map.
For developers:
HttpServerUtility.HtmlEncode(Text)
Server.HtmlEncode(Text)
HttpUtility.HtmlEncode(text)
htmlEscape.convert(text)
html.EscapeString(s string)
he.encode(string, :named)
escapeHtml4(Text)
htmlEntities.encode(text)
htmlentities($text)
encode_entities($text)
xml.sax.saxutils.escape(text)
coder.encode(string, :named)
html_escape::encode_text(text)
text.addingASCIIEntities()
HttpUtility.HtmlEncode(Text)