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HTML Entities

Reserved characters in HTML must be replaced with character entities.

HTML Entities

Some characters are reserved in HTML.

It is not possible to use the less than (<) or greater than (>) signs in your text, because the browser will mix them with tags.

To actually display reserved characters, we must use character entities in the HTML source code.

A character entity looks like this:

&entity_name;

OR

&#entity_number;

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

Remark Tip: The advantage of using an entity name, instead of a number, is that the name is easier to remember. However, the disadvantage is that browsers may not support all entity names (the support for entity numbers is very good).

Non-breaking Space

A common character entity used in HTML is the non-breaking space (&nbsp;).

Browsers will always truncate spaces in HTML pages. If you write 10 spaces in your text, the browser will remove 9 of them, before displaying the page. To add spaces to your text, you can use the &nbsp; character entity.

HTML Entities Example

Experiment with HTML character entities: Try it yourself

HTML Useful Character Entities

Note: Entity names are case sensitive!

Result Description Entity Name Entity Number
  non-breaking space &nbsp; &#160;
< less than &lt; &#60;
> greater than &gt; &#62;
& ampersand &amp; &#38;
¢ cent &cent; &#162;
£ pound &pound; &#163;
¥ yen &yen; &#165;
€ euro &euro; &#8364;
§ section &sect; &#167;
© copyright &copy; &#169;
® registered trademark &reg; &#174;
™ trademark &trade; &#8482;

For a complete reference of all character entities, visit our HTML Entities Reference.


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