What is &#xC?

&#xC represents the Form Feed (FF) character. This character is a control code, historically used to instruct printers to advance to the next page.

Understanding Form Feed

Purpose: The primary function of Form Feed (FF) was to signal the end of a page to printers, telling them to eject the current sheet and begin printing on a new one.
ASCII Code: In the ASCII character set, Form Feed is represented by the decimal value 12 (hexadecimal 0x0C).
HTML Entity: &#xC is the HTML entity representation of this character. The &# indicates a numerical character reference, and xC specifies the hexadecimal value of the character.

While less common with modern printers, the Form Feed character can still appear in various contexts:

Legacy Systems: It may be present in data originating from older systems or file formats designed for line printers.
Text Processing: Some text processing applications may use FF as a page separator.
Email: As noted in the provided reference, it can sometimes inadvertently be introduced into email bodies during drag-and-drop operations, potentially causing unexpected formatting issues.

&#xC is the HTML entity encoding for the Form Feed character, a control code that historically told printers to start a new page.