URL encoding: what %20, %0A and %C3%B1 mean and why they show up in your links

When you generate a link with a message, the text fills up with percent signs. It isn't an error: it is how a URL carries characters it can't contain directly.

Published on October 6, 2026 · By the QLinky team

Why it is needed

A URL can only contain a limited set of characters, and several of them have a special meaning: ? marks where the parameters start, & separates them, # points to a section of the page. If your message contains one of those signs unencoded, the link is cut off there.

Percent-encoding replaces each problematic character with a % followed by its hexadecimal value. Characters outside the basic alphabet (accented letters, emojis) are first converted to UTF-8 and take up several codes in a row.

The ones you'll see most often

A full example

The Spanish message “Hola, ¿tienen envío a Córdoba?” (Hi, do you ship to Córdoba?) inside a WhatsApp link looks like this:

https://wa.me/5491123456789?text=Hola%2C%20%C2%BFtienen%20env%C3%ADo%20a%20C%C3%B3rdoba%3F

It looks unreadable, but when opened WhatsApp shows the original text, with its accents and punctuation.

Typical mistakes when building links by hand

• Leaving spaces unencoded. Many applications cut the link at the first space when you paste it.
• Encoding twice. If you run already-encoded text through an encoder, %20 becomes %2520 and the message arrives with the codes showing.
• Using + as a space. It works in some web forms, but in mailto: and sms: links it shows up as a plus sign.
• Encoding the whole URL. Only the value of each parameter is encoded, not the ?, & and = that structure the link.

How to do it in code

In JavaScript, the encodeURIComponent() function correctly encodes a parameter value. It is the one QLinky uses in all its generators:

const message = "Hola, ¿tienen envío?";
const url = "https://wa.me/5491123456789?text=" + encodeURIComponent(message);

Don't use encodeURI() for this: it leaves unencoded precisely the &, ? and # signs, which are the ones that break the link.