how much is it important to include character encoding in html file?

[SandySynaptik]

How can it effect if I don't include character encoding i.e.<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">(the above line) on my html page.

[boen_robot]

If all of your content is in English, and you don't care about non-English speaking users, and you don't intend on using fancy symbol characters like a check mark or something similar, it doesn't affect you one bit.In all other cases, not specifying UTF-8 forbids you, or anyone writing on the site (by means of comments or whatever) to show such characters off. Instead, everyone will see what can be described as "gibberish".But that's UTF-8 in general. Assuming you've declared UTF-8 at all other places except the meta element, the only drawback you're creating is that such special characters won't be visible if users save and view your page on their computer (as opposed to downloading it directly, and viewing it at your site).