Look up any HTML entity instantly
HTML reserves a handful of characters — the ampersand, angle brackets, and quotes — for its own syntax, so they must be written as entities to appear as literal text. Many other symbols, from currency signs to arrows to Greek letters, also have convenient named entities. This tool lets you search by name, description, or the character itself, then copy the exact code you need.
Three ways to write any entity
Every HTML entity maps to a Unicode code point, and there are three ways to reference it in markup:
- Named entity — a human-readable mnemonic starting with
&and ending with;. For example&for&or©for©. HTML5 defines over 2,000 named entities; HTML 4 had fewer and'was notably absent. - Decimal numeric reference — the Unicode code point expressed in base 10, e.g.
&for&(code point 38) or€for€(code point 8364). - Hexadecimal numeric reference — the same code point in hex, prefixed with
x, e.g.&for&or€for€. Hex is compact for higher code points.
Named entities are easiest to read in source; numeric references work for any Unicode character even when no name exists.
What you must always escape
These characters have special meaning in HTML and must be escaped whenever they appear as text or attribute content:
| Character | Entity | Why |
|---|---|---|
& | & | Starts every entity sequence |
< | < | Opens a tag |
> | > | Closes a tag (technically optional in content, but safest to escape) |
" | " | Closes a double-quoted attribute |
' | ' | Closes a single-quoted attribute |
Characters you can type directly on modern pages
On a UTF-8 page declared with <meta charset="utf-8"> you can usually embed the literal character directly instead of using an entity. For example ©, —, €, → and α all render fine without escaping. Entities remain useful when you want encoding-proof output (HTML email, legacy CMS), when you are writing HTML in a context that mangles non-ASCII characters, or simply when you prefer readable mnemonic names in source.
Useful entity families to explore
Search these keywords to browse related groups:
arrow— directional arrows (→ ← ↑ ↓ ⇒ ⟹)currency— £ ¥ € ¢ ₽ ₿greek— α β γ δ Σ Ω (used in maths and science)math— ≤ ≥ ≠ ∞ ∑ √ ∫quote— typographic quotes ” ” ’ ’space— non-breaking space ( ), thin space, em spacesymbol— © ® ™ § ¶
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