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Entities
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Published Mar 22, 2022 • Updated Oct 11, 2023
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Entities are character sequences placed in the
text of an HTML document to print out reserved
characters which may otherwise be interpreted
as HTML code by a browser, or other special
characters that would be di!cult to generate
with a typical keyboard. In fact, using reference
numbers, an entity can represent any Unicode
character. When parsing the HTML, a browser
replaces the entity’s character sequence with
the character it represents.
Syntax
Entities are case-sensitive and can take one of
three forms.
The "rst form references an entity by name:
&name;
The second form references it by the decimal
Unicode number:
&#number;
The third represents it with the hexadecimal
Unicode number, often with leading zeros:
&#xnumber;
So the copyright entity ( © ) can be represented
as © , © or © .
Entity Values
There are many HTML entities. The following are
some common ones:
2nd
Entity Name 1st Form 3rd Form
Form
Non-breaking
   
space
Less-than sign
< < <
<
Greater-than
> > >
sign >
Ampersand & & & &
Quote " " " "
Apostrophe ' ' ' '
Copyright © © © ©
Degree ° ° ° °
Euro € € € €
Bullet
• • •
character •
More can be found in this extensive HTML 5
entity reference.
The Tab Entity
There is an entity 	 (or 	 ) which
nominally produces a tab character. However, it
will not behave as expected because HTML
collapses whitespace where it appears in text
with the exception of the non-breaking space
entity, . So to render a tab in HTML text,
it needs to be wrapped within a <pre> tag to
preserve the whitespace.
<p>The tab entity 	 in this sentence
<pre>
<p>The tab entity 	 in this sentenc
</pre>
Output:
Alternatively, four entities can be used.
<p>The Tab entity 	 in this sentence
<p>The spaces in
Entities
Greek Symbols
Used in scienti"c, mathematical, and
technological applications.
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