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HTML Entities
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Reserved characters in HTML must be replaced with entities:
< (less than) = <
> (greater 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.
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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   Try it »
< less than < < Try it »
> greater than
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> >
Sign Up TryLog
it »in
&
HTML CSS ampersand
JAVASCRIPT SQL PYTHON & PHP
JAVA &
HOW TO W3.CSS Try
C it » C++
" double quotation mark " " Try it »
' single quotation mark ' ' Try it »
¢ cent ¢ ¢ Try it »
£ pound £ £ Try it »
¥ yen ¥ ¥ Try it »
€ euro € € Try it »
© copyright © © Try it »
® registered trademark ® ® Try it »
™ trademark ™ ™ Try it »
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 »
̂ Tutorials a Exercises â
Services â
Sign Up TryLog
it »in
̃
HTML CSS a
JAVASCRIPT SQL ã JAVA
PYTHON PHPã HOW TO W3.CSS Try
C it » C++
̀ 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;
Submit Answer »
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