specail characters enable you to add things to your strings that could not be added otherwise. for example, lets say that you need a tab character between each word in a string. If you press the TAB key on the keyboard, javascript will probably see it as a bunch of spaces, instead, use the special character \t, which places a tab in the string, as in this example
var mypets = "dog \tcat\tbird";
in each spot where the specail character t appears javascript interprets tab charcaters. the spcail charcters all begin with a backlash character (\)
| Output Character | Special Code to Use |
| Backslah (\) | \\ |
| Double quote (") | \" |
| Single quote (') | \' |
| Backspace | \b |
| Form feed | \f |
| Newline | \n |
| Carriage return | \r |
| Tab | \t |