HTML Entities: Encoding Special Characters for the Web

HTML entities provide a way to include characters in HTML that would otherwise be interpreted as markup or that aren't easily typeable. They come in two forms: named entities like & for &, and numeric references like © or © for the copyright symbol ©.

When You Must Use Entities

A small set of characters must be escaped in HTML to avoid parse errors. The ampersand & must be written as & to avoid being interpreted as the start of an entity. The less-than sign < must be < to avoid starting an HTML tag. Inside attribute values, quotes also need escaping. Everything else is optional when your document is correctly declared as UTF-8.

Named vs Numeric Entities

HTML5 defines over 2,000 named character references, from familiar ones like   (non-breaking space) and © (©) to obscure mathematical operators. Named entities are readable but require memorization. Numeric references work for any Unicode character: 😀 renders as 😀. Browse all named entities in our HTML entities reference.

The UTF-8 Alternative

With a proper <meta charset="UTF-8"> declaration, you can include most characters directly in HTML source without entities. Writing © 2026 directly is equivalent to © 2026 and is often clearer. Entities are mainly useful when your source file doesn't support the target encoding, or for the handful of structurally significant characters (<, >, &, and quotes in attributes).

Finding the Right Entity

Each character in our character browser shows its HTML entity representation — both the named form (if one exists) and the numeric reference. You can also use the text encoder to convert any string into HTML entity form in bulk.