How do I escape a single quote ( ' ) in JavaScript?

The answer here is very simple:

You're already containing it in double quotes, so there's no need to escape it with \.

If you want to escape single quotes in a single quote string:

var string = 'this isn\'t a double quoted string';
var string = "this isn\"t a single quoted string";
//           ^         ^ same types, hence we need to escape it with a backslash

or if you want to escape \', you can escape the bashslash to \\ and the quote to \' like so:

var string = 'this isn\\\'t a double quoted string';
//                    vvvv
//                     \ ' (the escaped characters)

However, if you contain the string with a different quote type, you don't need to escape:

var string = 'this isn"t a double quoted string';
var string = "this isn't a single quoted string";
//           ^        ^ different types, hence we don't need escaping

You should always consider what the browser will see by the end. In this case, it will see this:

<img src='something' onmouseover='change(' ex1')' />

In other words, the "onmouseover" attribute is just change(, and there's another "attribute" called ex1')' with no value.

The truth is, HTML does not use \ for an escape character. But it does recognise " and ' as escaped quote and apostrophe, respectively.

Armed with this knowledge, use this:

document.getElementById("something").innerHTML = "<img src='something' onmouseover='change(&quot;ex1&quot;)' />";

... That being said, you could just use JavaScript quotes:

document.getElementById("something").innerHTML = "<img src='something' onmouseover='change(\"ex1\")' />";