I\'m using an \'&
\' symbol with HTML5 and UTF-8 in my site\'s
. Google shows the ampersand fine on its SERPs, as do all the browse
HTML5 rules are different from HTML4. It's not required in HTML5 - unless the ampersand looks like it starts a parameter name. "©=2" is still a problem, for example, since © is the copyright symbol.
However it seems to me that it's harder work to decide to encode or not to encode depending on the following text. So the easiest path is probably to encode all the time.