[thelist] character encoding and !DOCTYPE help

[Roger Harness]

Evolters,

Once again, I don't get it.

Though I'm a long ways away from any of my stuff validating, I at least want
to get close. But I'm having a hard time grasping the concepts of character
encoding and doctypes.

Can anyone give me some pointers, or links that might help me with these
guys?

I'm taking a look at http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/charset.html#h-5.2.2
for instance, and it just *ain't* sinking in. Not that I even need to
totally understand it, but for my piddly little websites, what kinda charset
should i be using?? Or more importantly, why would someone else use a
different one? When would I need to change?

And what should my doctypes be, if im using stylesheets AND tables?
Transitional? Loose? Both? Neither?

Though it'd be great to fully understand what all that means, for now I'd
settle for just a basic understanding of what *I* should put on the pages
I'm trying to piece together. And when exactly I should change.

Apparently over my humble head,

-Roger Harness