HTML Entities

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HTML Entities

Reserved characters in HTML must be replaced with character entities.

HTML Entities

Some characters are reserved in HTML.

If you use the less than (<) or greater than (>) signs in your text, the browser might mix them with tags.

Character entities are used to display reserved characters in HTML.

A character entity looks like this:

&entity_name;

OR

&#entity_number;

Another common use of the non-breaking space is to prevent that browsers truncate 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 (‑) lets you use a hyphen character (‑) that won't break.

Some Other Useful HTML Character Entities

ResultDescriptionEntity NameEntity Numbernon-breaking space  <less than<<>greater than>>&ampersand&&"double quotation mark""'single quotation mark (apostrophe)''¢cent¢¢£pound££¥yen¥¥€euro€€©copyright©©®registered trademark®®
To display a less than sign (<) we must write: <or <

Advantage of using an entity name: An entity name is easy to remember.
Disadvantage of using an entity name:Browsers may not support all entity names, but the support for numbers is good.

Non-breaking Space

A common character entity used in HTML 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:

§ 1010 km/h10 PM
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.
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.

Example:

Mark Character Constructs Results
̀ a à à
́ a á á
̂ a â â
̃ a ã ã
̀ O Ò Ò
́ O Ó Ó
̂ O Ô Ô
̃ O Õ Õ