HTML Character Entities

An "entity" is a fancy term for a symbol. Several symbols, such as copyright, trademark, or foreign cash symbols, exist on your standard keyboard, so you need to display these characters using a different method.

There are three parts to every entity.

• Each begins with a ampersand - &
• Then the entities name - copy
• And finally a semicolon - ;

Copyright:

Expect complications if you forget to include all three parts of an entity.

More Entities:

View a more complete list at: Entities Table

Additional Spaces and <>.

Regardless of how many spaces you place between words, your web browser will only render a single space. To get around this, use the non-breaking space character entity.

<p>Everything that goes up, must come &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; down!</p>

Spaces:

In HTML, we use less than and greater than characters to create tags, so to use them on your website you will need entities.

<p>
Less than - &lt; <br />
Greater than - &gt; <br />
Body tag - &lt;body&gt;
</p>

Less than Greater than:

Take a few minutes to view and play with the symbols listed in the Entities Table.

• Go Back
• Continue

Tips

• Names or Numbers? After looking at our entities table you probably noticed that there is a number value and a name value for each entity. Some older browsers do not support name values, but it is not likely that someone will run into this problem today.
• Remember to use the entity code for < and > within your text. Otherwise you might find strange errors occurring all over the place that you can't pinpoint.

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