# Using Special Characters in XML

When you use wizards to customize any string in your XML file, you can use the following special symbols: <, >, &, ', ". You can also use these symbols when you are editing a query in Expert Mode or when you are manually entering SQL code into XML files between CDATA tags.

If you are editing your XML files manually, and your SQL statement is not between CDATA tags, do not use special symbols in the WHERE clause, because the XML Parser will throw a parsing exception. Instead, use the following escape sequences to represent these symbols. The number in each sequence is the ASCII value of that character.

Symbol (name) | Escape Sequence
< (less-than) | &#60; or &lt;
> (greater-than) | &#62; or &gt;
& (ampersand) | &#38;
' (apostrophe or single quote) | &#39;
" (double-quote) | &#34;