Some characters have a special meaning in HTML, and therefore cannot be used in the text.

Character Entities

Some characters have a special meaning in HTML, like the less than sign (<) that defines the start of an HTML tag. If we want the browser to actually display these characters we must insert character entities in the HTML source.

A character entity has four parts:

• An ampersand (&),
• An entity name or a #
• An entity number,
• Finally a semicolon (;).

Non-breaking Space

The most common character entity in HTML is the non-breaking space.

Normally HTML will truncate spaces in your text. If you write 10 spaces in your text, HTML will remove 9 of them. To add spaces to your text, use the &nbsp;

The Common Character Entities:

Result	Description	Entity Name	Entity Number
	non-breaking space	 	 
<	less than	&lt;	&#60;
>	greater than	&gt;	&#62;
&	ampersand	&amp;	&#38;
"	quotation mark	&quot;	&#34;
'	apostrophe		&#39;

Commonly Used Character Entities:

Result	Description	Entity Name	Entity Number
¢	cent	¢	¢
£	pound	£	£
¥	yen	¥	¥
§	section	§	§
©	copyright	©	©
®	registered trademark	®	®
×	multiplication	×	×
÷	division	÷	÷

HTML Entities Reference