Editing Incubator escapee wiki:Help desk/Archive 4 (section)

== Subtraction symbols don't appear in articles, just a rectangle ==

I checked more than one mathematical article (such as Subtraction) to be sure that the problem was not just in one article.  The subtraction symbol, apparently coded with &amp;minus;, does not appear as it should in the articles.  All I see is a rectangle.  Why?  What's the fix?  I have the huge Unicode font file, so certainly the symbol is available.

:It's a problem with your computer, not with Wikipedia. Either (a) you don't have a font with a minus sign, or (b) your browser can't find the right font, or (c) your browser doesn't know that &amp;minus; refers to the minus sign. Does &#8722; (&amp;#8772;) work for you? If it does, then your problem is (c). [[User:Gdr|Gdr]] 18:34, 2004 Jul 3 (UTC)

OK, it looks like the answer was (b).  I fixed it (in IE 6) with Tools/Internet Options/General/Accessability/Ignore font styles present in Web pages.  I don't know why ignoring font styles would make the characters display correctly, but that's the setting that does it.