Examples

Basic HTML: <a href="http://example.tld/?foo=1&bar=2">Link's Text</a>
Explanation: Angle brackets & ampersands should be output to the browser as encoded entities; single & double quotes should not be made curly.

Basic entities: ... -- --- " ' & < >
Explanation: The characters should be directly output to the browser (or encoded for such output, as in the case of the ampersand). Three dots should not be made into an ellipsis; double and triple dashes should not be converted into en or em dashes; quotes should not be made curly; ampersands and angle brackets should be encoded to maintain (X)HTML validity.

Block example (PRE tag wrapping our CODE tag):

<a href="http://example.com/?foo=1&bar=2">Link's Text</a>

	...    --    ---    "    '    &    <    >

As above in the HTML & entities examples, all quotes and symbols should appear properly, as they do when seen via the Visual Editor. In the three blank lines, tabs should be preserved (2 in the first blank line, then 3, then 2 again). Prior to the final line of characters, a tab should be preserved. Lastly, between each character example in the final line, four ordinary spaces should be preserved.

Finally, here are the examples again marked up using shortcodes in order to test such plugins (if you do not have a [code] shortcode enabled, ignore the following:

Basic HTML: [code]<a href="http://example.tld/?foo=1&bar=2">Link's Text</a>[/code]

Basic entities: [code]... -- --- " ' & < >[/code]

Block example (PRE tag wrapping our CODE tag). Caveat: For this final example, I am not using a [pre] shortcode; the Visual Editor does not recognize text wrapped in [pre] tags as preformatted, and so it strips out linebreaks and tabs. However, the Visual Editor provides an easy enough means of making text preformatted, so I'm using the PRE HTML tag in this final example:

[code]<a href="http://example.tld/?foo=1&bar=2">Link's Text</a>

	...    --    ---    "    '    &    <    >[/code]