HTML Character Entities Common Special Characters
Example
Some character may be reserved for HTML and cannot be used directly as it may obstruct the actual HTML codes. For example, trying to display the left and right angle brackets (<>) in the source code may cause unexpected results in the output. Similarly, white spaces as written in the source code may not display as expected in the output HTML. Some, like ☎, are not available in the ASCII character set.
For this purpose, character entities are created. These are of the form &entity_name; or &entity_number;. The following are some of the available HTML entities.
| Character | Description | Entity Name | Entity Number |
|---|---|---|---|
| “ ” | non-breaking space | |   |
| “<” | less than | < | < |
| “>” | greater than | > | > |
| “&” | ampersand | & | & |
| “—” | em dash | — | — |
| “–” | en dash | – | – |
| “©” | copyright | © | © |
| “®” | registered trademark | ® | ® |
| “™” | trademark | ™ | ™ |
| “☎” | phone | ☎ | ☎ |
Thus, to write
© 2016 Stack Exchange Inc.
the following HTML code is used:
<b>© 2016 Stack Exchange Inc.</b>
