Why can't RSS handle the ampersand?

Question

When I come across a broken RSS feed, the usual reason its all blown to pieces is because line 23 says \"Sanford & Sons.\"

The most confusing thing is the fact

Answer 1

This depends highly on the RSS client, but most likely it's attempting to XML-decode the contents (in your example "Sanford & Sons"). When that happens, & indicates an escaped character. If you don't use & as it decodes, it will try to use the next few characters to complete the escape sequence. Odds are highly likely that it will fail.