In this case, you can use Unicode escape values by preceding them with a slash:
.rarr:after { content: "\2192"; } This is specified in the CSS 2.1 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/syndata.html#characters Personally, I probably would've just started on StackOverflow with this question (e.g. [1]) but no harm done. [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10393462/placing-unicode-character-in-css-content-value Sincerely, James Greene On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 5:45 AM, David Sheets <kosmo...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hello, > > I have a page with > > a <span class="rarr"><span>-></span></span> b > > and style > > .rarr span { overflow: hidden; height: 0; width: 0; display: inline-block; > } > .rarr::after { content: "→"; } > > (That's RIGHTWARDS ARROW x2192.) > > In Firefox 36, this copies and pastes like "a -> b" which is the > desired behavior. In Chrome 40, this copies and pastes like "a b". > > Is my desired behavior (to show unicode but copy an ASCII > representation) generally possible? Are there specs somewhere about > copy/paste behavior? I looked in <https://html.spec.whatwg.org/> but > found nothing relevant. > > Is this the right venue for this question? Should I take it somewhere else? > > Thanks, > > David Sheets >