Invalid HTML characters in questions bodies

Question

While writing an Android App that shows questions from the SE network, I've noticed that the SE REST API returns invalid HTML characters; after a bit more of researching I've found it's not the API itself but the entire network sending invalid HTML to browsers.

I'm not the most HTML expert 'round here, so maybe I'm totally wrong. Right now I think I've found these:

• \n instead of br in text contained between code tags. Browsers save the day by adding a new line when needed, but still I'm nearly sure \n is not W3C compliant in any way
• some special character are not html encoded. I've noticed a few, right now the last I can remember are right and left quotes (example: https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/11033/im-at-a-loss-with-dungeons-and-dragons-how-does-one-play-it-anyway ).

(I've posted this here because Android internal browser component do not intercepts those two cases, so it's currently just a problem in my App)

Answer 1

1. If the code tags are <pre>s, then \n is fine. Pre means "preformatted;" it makes the browser ignore the usual rules and preserve whitespace, etc.
2. Repeat after me: "There is no such thing as a special character." Html is perfectly happy to receive UTF-8.