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HTML Entities


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Reserved characters in HTML must be replaced with entities:

  • < (less than) = &lt;
  • > (greather than) = &gt;

HTML Character Entities

Some characters are reserved in HTML.

If you use the less than (<) or greater than (>) signs in your HTML text, the browser might mix them with tags.

Entity names or entity numbers can be used to display reserved HTML characters.

Entity names look like this:

&entity_name;

Entity numbers look like this:

&#entity_number;

To display a less than sign (<) we must write: &lt; or &#60;

Non-breaking Space

A commonly used HTML entity is the non-breaking space: &nbsp;

A non-breaking space is a space that will not break into a new line.

Two words separated by a non-breaking space will stick together (not break into a new line). This is handy when breaking the words might be disruptive.

Examples:

  • § 10
  • 10 km/h
  • 10 PM

Another common use of the non-breaking space is to prevent browsers from truncating spaces in HTML pages.

If you write 10 spaces in your text, the browser will remove 9 of them. To add real spaces to your text, you can use the &nbsp; character entity.

Some Useful HTML Character Entities

Result         Description                                                                                      Name                                 Number
< less than &lt; &#60;  
> greater than &gt; &#62;  
& ampersand &amp; &#38;  
“ double quotation mark &quot; &#34;  
‘ single quotation mark &apos; &#39;  
¢ cent &cent; &#162;  
£ pound &pound; &#163;  
¥ yen &yen; &#165;  
€ euro &euro; &#8364;  
© copyright &copy; &#169;  
® trademark &reg; &#174;

Combining Diacritical Marks

A diacritical mark is a “glyph” added to a letter.

Some diacritical marks, like grave (  ̀) and acute (  ́) are called accents.

Diacritical marks can be used in combination with alphanumeric characters to produce a character that is not present in the character set (encoding) used in the page.

Here are some examples:

Mark    Character                                                             Construct                  Result
< less than &lt; &#60;  
> greater than &gt; &#62;  
& ampersand &amp; &#38;  
“ double quotation mark &quot; &#34;  
‘ single quotation mark &apos; &#39;  
¢ cent &cent; &#162;  
£ pound &pound; &#163;  
¥ yen &yen; &#165;  
€ euro &euro; &#8364;  
© copyright &copy; &#169;  
® trademark &reg; &#174;


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