Does & need to be & in the meta description?

Question

I\'m inserting content which has the & sign. I would like to know if it\'s needed to insert it as & so this sign is read correctly.

Answer 1

In HTML5, you are not allowed to use "ambiguous ampersands" in attribute values:

Attribute values are a mixture of text and character references, except with the additional restriction that the text cannot contain an ambiguous ampersand.

An ambiguous ampersand is defined as:

[…] a U+0026 AMPERSAND character (&) that is followed by one or more alphanumeric ASCII characters, followed by a ";" (U+003B) character, where these characters do not match any of the names given in the named character references section.

In your example (&B lorem), the ampersand (&) is followed by an alphanumeric ASCII character (B), but this one is not followed by a semicolon (;). So your ampersand is not ambiguous.

Which means that both of your examples are valid.