title: What character encoding should I use for a HTTP header?
body: <p>I'm using a "fun" HTML special-character (✰)(see <a href="http://html5boilerplate.com/" rel="noreferrer">http://html5boilerplate.com/</a> for more info) for a <code>Server</code> HTTP-header and am wondering if it is "allowed" per spec.</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li><p>Using the Network Tab in the dev tools in Chrome on Windows Xp Pro SP 3 I see the ✰ just fine.</p></li>
  <li><p>In IE8 the ✰ is <em>not</em> rendered correctly.</p></li>
  <li><p>The w3.org HTML validator does <em>not</em> render it correctly (displays "<code>â°</code>" instead).</p></li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>Now, I'm not too keen on character encodings ... and frankly I don't really care too much about them; I just blindly use UTF-8 cus I'm told to. :-)</p>
  
  <hr>
  
  <p><strong>Is the disparity caused by bugs in the different parsers/browses/engines/(whatever-they-are-called)?</strong></p>
  
  <p><strong>Is there a spec for this or maybe a list of allowed characters for an HTTP-header "value"?</strong></p>