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HTML Entities

This article explains about entities.

Special characters in HTML

The number of a characters and symbols in existence is so enormous that all of them can not be displayed on a regular sized keyboard. Say For example the © copyright symbol - it’s all over the web, yet it seems to be one of those symbols missing from the keyboard.

Coming to <, this symbol when used in its basic form does not appear on a browser!

Well, Thanks to HTML we come up with what’s known as an Entity.

Entities are used to display characters/symbols which cannot be entered via the keyboard or because of conflicting codes in HTML.

An entity also known as an ampersand entity can be represented in two forms: Named Entities and Numeric Entities

Named Entities

A Named entity (character entity) is composed by an ampersand symbol along with an entity name followed by a semicolon. For Instance, the greater than symbol > would be encoded as: >. Here gt stands as an abbreviation for greater than, as you can see Named Entities are easy to remember. But, with the increasing number of browsers coming up, not all may support Named Entities, that’s where Numeric Entities come into action.

Numeric Entities

You create a Numeric Entity by starting with an ampersand and a Hash symbol followed by an entity number and finally a semicolon. Considering the greater than symbol again >, the corresponding Numeric Entity representation would be: >. Unlike Named Entities it’s difficult to remember these, but considering the different browsers and the versions available up to date, a Numeric Entity would be more reliable.

Entities are case sensitive though HTML is not! Here’s a list of Entities:





























































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































Result Description Name Code Number Code
 horizontal tab  &#09;
 line feed  &#10;
 space  &#32;
! exclamation mark  &#33;
" double quotation mark &quot; &#34;
# number sign  &#35;
$ dollar sign  &#36;
% percent sign  &#37;
& ampersand &amp; &#38;
' apostrophe  &#39;
( left parenthesis  &#40;
) right parenthesis  &#41;
* asterisk  &#42;
+ plus sign  &#43;
, comma  &#44;
- hyphen  &#45;
. period  &#46;
/ slash &frasl; &#47;
0 - 9 Digits 0-9  &#48; to &#57;
: colon  &#58;
; semicolon  &#59;
< lesser than &lt; &#60;
= equals sign  &#61;
> greater than &gt; &#62;
? question mark  &#63;
@ at sign  &#64;
A - Z uppercase letters A-Z  &#65; to &#90;
[ left square bracket  &#91;
\ backslash  &#92;
] right square bracket  &#93;
^ caret  &#94;
_ horizontal bar (underscore)  &#95;
` grave accent  &#96;
a - z lowercase letters a-z  &#97; to &#122;
{ left curly brace  &#123;
| vertical bar  &#124;
} right curly brace  &#125;
~ tilde  &#126;
– en dash &ndash; &#150;
— em dash &mdash; &#151;
 nonbreaking space &nbsp; &#160;
¡ inverted exclamation &iexcl; &#161;
¢ cent sign &cent; &#162;
£ pound sterling &pound; &#163;
¤ general currency sign &curren; &#164;
¥ yen sign &yen; &#165;
¦ broken vertical bar &brvbar; &#166
§ section sign &sect; &#167;
¨ umlaut &uml; &#168;
© copywrite &copy; &#169;
ª feminine ordinal &ordf; &#170;
« left angle quote &laquo; &#171;
¬ not sign &not; &#172;
® registered trademark &reg; &#174;
¯ macron accent &macr; &#175;
° degree sign &deg; &#176;
± plus or minus &plusmn; &#177;
² superscript two &sup2; &#178;
³ superscript three &sup3; &#179;
´ acute accent &acute; &#180;
µ micro sign &micro; &#181;
¶ paragraph sign &para; &#182;
· middle dot &middot; &#183;
¸ cedilla &cedil; &#184;
¹ superscript one &sup1; &#185;
º masculine ordinal &ordm; &#186;
» right angle quote &raquo; &#187;
¼ one-fourth &frac14; &#188;
½ one-half &frac12; &#189;
¾ three-fourths &frac34; &#190;
¿ inverted question mark &iquest; &#191;
À uppercase A, grave accent &Agrave; &#192;
Á uppercase A, acute accent &Aacute; &#193;
Â uppercase A, circumflex accent &Acirc; &#194;
Ã uppercase A, tilde &Atilde; &#195;
Ä uppercase A, umlaut &Auml; &#196;
Å uppercase A, ring &Aring; &#197;
Æ uppercase AE &AElig; &#198;
Ç uppercase C, cedilla &Ccedil; &#199;
È uppercase E, grave accent &Egrave; &#200;
É uppercase E, acute accent &Eacute; &#201;
Ê uppercase E, circumflex accent &Ecirc; &#202;
Ë uppercase E, umlaut &Euml; &#203;
Ì uppercase I, grave accent &Igrave; &#204;
Í uppercase I, acute accent &Iacute; &#205;
Î uppercase I, circumflex accent &Icirc; &#206;
Ï uppercase I, umlaut &Iuml; &#207;
Ð uppercase Eth, Icelandic &ETH; &#208;
Ñ uppercase N, tilde &Ntilde; &#209;
Ò uppercase O, grave accent &Ograve; &#210;
Ó uppercase O, acute accent &Oacute; &#211;
Ô uppercase O, circumflex accent &Ocirc; &#212;
Õ uppercase O, tilde &Otilde; &#213;

Coming up next : Attributes

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