HTML Entities

Some characters are reserved in HTML — for example, < and > are used for tags. To display these characters as text, you must use HTML entities.

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What is an HTML Entity?

An HTML entity is a piece of text that starts with & and ends with ;. It represents a character that either:

• Is reserved in HTML (like <, >, &)
• Is not easily typed on a keyboard (like ©, ®, €)

Entities can be written as a named entity or a numeric entity:

&entity_name;     <!-- Named entity -->
&#entity_number;  <!-- Numeric (decimal) entity -->
&#xhex_number;   <!-- Numeric (hex) entity -->

Example — displaying the less-than sign <:

&lt;     <!-- Named entity -->
&#60;    <!-- Numeric (decimal) -->
&#x3C;   <!-- Numeric (hex) -->

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Reserved Characters

These characters must be replaced with entities when used as content in HTML:

Character	Description	Entity Name	Entity Number
<	Less than	&lt;	&#60;
>	Greater than	&gt;	&#62;
&	Ampersand	&amp;	&#38;
"	Double quote	&quot;	&#34;
'	Single quote / apostrophe	&apos;	&#39;

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Non-Breaking Space —  

The most commonly used entity is the non-breaking space  . It adds a space that will not collapse or line-break:

<p>10&nbsp;km</p>
<p>Hello&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;World</p>

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Common Special Character Entities

Character	Description	Entity Name	Entity Number
	Non-breaking space	 	 
©	Copyright	©	©
®	Registered trademark	®	®
™	Trademark	™	™
€	Euro sign	€	€
£	Pound sign	£	£
¥	Yen sign	¥	¥
¢	Cent sign	¢	¢
—	Em dash	—	—
–	En dash	–	–
«	Left angle quotes	«	«
»	Right angle quotes	»	»
♥	Heart	—	♥
★	Star	—	★

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Combining Entities

Entities can be combined with regular text and other HTML tags:

<p>&copy; 2025 RedoHub. All rights reserved.</p>
<p>Price: &euro;29.99</p>
<p>5 &lt; 10 and 10 &gt; 5</p>