HTML entities provide a method of entering characters that cannot be expressed in the document's character encoding or that cannot easily be entered on a keyboard.

HTML Entities Format

Entities take the form of &entityname; like in   (which means a non-breaking space) or & (which means &). Entities are also case sensitive, so there is a difference between á (which means á) and Á (which means Á).

Numeric Character References

Besides HTML entities, numeric character references can also be used to express characters. While entities are limited, using numeric character references you can express any character.

Numeric Character References Format

The format is &#number;. number can be either decimal or hexadecimal (prefixed with x).

For example:

✓

...can be reproduced using: ✓ (decimal), ✓ (hexadecimal), ✓ or ✓.

Links

• W3C's Character Entity Reference Chart
• HTML Entities on WDG
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_XML_and_HTML_character_entity_references
• A robust HTML entity encoder/decoder written in JavaScript