The double-quotation marks ("), single-quotation mark ('), and number sign (#) characters have special meaning to ColdFusion. To include any of them in a string, double the character; for example, use ## to represent a single # character.

The need to escape the single- and double-quotation marks is context-sensitive. Inside a double-quoted string, you do not need to escape single-quotation mark (apostrophe) characters. Inside a single-quoted string, you do not escape double-quotation mark characters.

The following example illustrates escaping special characters, including the use of mixed single- and double-quotation marks:

<cfset mystring = "We all said ""Happy birthday to you.""">
<cfset mystring2 = 'Then we said "How old are you now?"'>
<cfoutput>
    #mystring#<br>
    #mystring2#<br>
    Here is a number sign: ##
</cfoutput>

The output looks like this:

We all said "Happy birthday to you."
Then we said "How old are you now?"
Here is a number sign: #