HTML Entities
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Reserved characters in HTML must be replaced with entities:
< (less than) = <
> (greather than) = >
HTML Character Entities
Some characters are reserved in HTML.
If you use the less than (<) or greater than (>) signs in your HTML text, the
browser might mix them with tags.
Entity names or entity numbers can be used to display reserved HTML
characters.
Entity names look like this:
&entity_name;
Entity numbers look like this:
&#entity_number;
To display a less than sign (<) we must write: < or <
Entity names are easier to remember than entity numbers.
Non-breaking Space
A commonly used HTML entity 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:
§ 10
10 km/h
10 PM
Another common use of the non-breaking space is to prevent browsers from
truncating 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 (‑) is used to define a hyphen character (-)
that does not break into a new line.
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Some Useful HTML Character Entities
Result Description Name Number
non-breaking space   T
< less than < < T
> greater than > > T
& ampersand & & T
" double quotation mark " " T
' single quotation mark ' ' T
¢ cent ¢ ¢ T
£ pound £ £ T
¥ yen ¥ ¥ T
€ euro € € T
© copyright © © T
® trademark ® ® T
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 accents.
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.
Here are some examples:
Mark Character Construct Result
̀ a à à Try it
́ a á á Try it
̂ a â â Try it
̃ a ã ã Try it
̀ O Ò Ò Try it
́ O Ó Ó Try it
̂ O Ô Ô Try it
̃ O Õ Õ Try it
There are more examples in the next chapter.
Exercise?
What is the entity name that represents a less than < sign?
<
&less;
