HTML Entities
Reserved characters in HTML must be replaced with entities:
- < (less than) = <
- > (greather than) = >
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: < or <
Entity names are easier to remember than entity numbers.
Non-breaking Space
A commonly used HTML entity is the non-breaking space:
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 character entity.
The non-breaking hyphen (‑) is used to define a hyphen character (‑) that does not break into a new line.
Some Useful HTML Character Entities
Result | Description | Name | Number | |
---|---|---|---|---|
non-breaking space | |   | Try it » | |
< | less than | < | < | Try it » |
> | greater than | > | > | Try it » |
& | ampersand | & | & | Try it » |
" | double quotation mark | " | " | Try it » |
' | single quotation mark | ' | ' | Try it » |
¢ | cent | ¢ | ¢ | Try it » |
£ | pound | £ | £ | Try it » |
¥ | yen | ¥ | ¥ | Try it » |
€ | euro | € | € | Try it » |
© | copyright | © | © | Try it » |
® | trademark | ® | ® | Try it » |
Note
Entity names are case sensitive.
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 | |
---|---|---|---|---|
̀ | a | à | à | Try it » |
́ | a | á | á | Try it » |
̂ | a | â | â | Try it » |
̃ | a | ã | ã | Try it » |
̀ | O | Ò | Ò | Try it » |
́ | O | Ó | Ó | Try it » |
̂ | O | Ô | Ô | Try it » |
̃ | O | Õ | Õ | Try it » |
There are more examples in the next chapter.