// use existing element
var author = 'John "Superman" Doe <john@example.com>';
var el = document.getElementById('first');
el.dataset.author = author;
el.textContent = 'Author: '+author;
// or create a new element
var a = document.createElement('a');
a.classList.add('important');
a.href = '/search?q=term+"exact"&n=50';
a.textContent = 'Search for "exact" term';
document.body.appendChild(a);
// actual HTML code
console.log(el.outerHTML);
console.log(a.outerHTML);
You should verify the entity ranges I have provided to validate the safety of the function yourself. You could also use this regular expression which has better readability and should cover the same character codes, but is about 10% less performant in my browser: