HTML Entity Reference

HTML Entities & Character References

HTML character references provide a way to represent characters that may be difficult to type, have a special meaning in HTML, or are more conveniently written using a character name or numeric code. They can be used for punctuation, mathematical symbols, currency signs, arrows, accented letters, technical symbols, and many other characters.

This reference organizes characters into categories so they are easier to find. Individual reference pages include the displayed character along with available named character references, decimal character references, and hexadecimal character references.

HTML Character References

HTML character references represent characters using text sequences that begin with an ampersand (&). They are especially important when a character would otherwise be interpreted as part of HTML markup.

For example, the less-than character (<) normally begins an HTML tag. To display it as text, it can be written using the named character reference < or a numeric character reference.

<p>5 &lt; 10</p>

Character Reference Types

HTML supports named and numeric character references. Numeric references can be written using either decimal or hexadecimal values.

All three examples above represent the ampersand character (&).

Common HTML Entities

Some character references are used frequently because their characters have special meaning in HTML or are commonly needed in webpage content.

Character Categories

Use the following reference pages to browse characters and symbols by category.

Using Character References

A character can usually be entered directly into an HTML document when the document uses UTF-8 encoding. Character references remain useful when displaying characters that have special meaning in HTML, when a character is difficult to enter directly, or when using a reference makes the source code clearer.

Named character references begin with an ampersand and normally end with a semicolon. Numeric character references begin with &# for decimal values or &#x for hexadecimal values.

<p>Copyright &copy; Example Website</p>
<p>Euro: &euro;</p>
<p>Right arrow: &rarr;</p>
<p>5 &lt; 10</p>