In the past I have always worked from the code behind page in ASP.NET

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Editorial Team

Asked: May 17, 20262026-05-17T21:35:00+00:00 2026-05-17T21:35:00+00:00

In the past I have always worked from the code behind page in ASP.NET and emitting all of my markup from that area.

I am now learning MVC and am working in the .ASPX page directly.

The following statements can be written…

<%= Html.Label("Test") %>
<%: Html.Label("Test")%>
<% Html.Label("Test"); %>

The first two emit the word ‘Test’, while the 3rd doesn’t do anything. Yet no errors are thrown.

I seem to recall <%= is shorthand for <% Response.Write(“”) %>. Is <%: the same shortcut?

I suppose the 3rd statment runs, but simply returns a string that is discarded.

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Editorial Team · Answer 1 · 2026-05-17T21:35:01+00:00

Editorial Team

You are right about 1 and 3. 2 does as one, but it html escapes the output.

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