Html Entities Guide for Web Designers and Developers

As a web designer or developer, you're likely familiar with the concept of HTML entities. HTML entities are used to represent special characters in HTML documents, and they're a crucial part of creating visually appealing and functional websites.

HTML entities are not the same as HTML tags, which are used to define the structure and content of a webpage.

In HTML, there are over 250 entities that can be used to represent special characters, including punctuation marks, symbols, and even mathematical operators.

Using HTML entities can help you avoid issues with character encoding and ensure that your website displays correctly across different browsers and devices.

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Character entities are used to display reserved HTML characters. They can be represented by entity names or entity numbers.

Entity names are written in the format &name;, while entity numbers are written as &#number;. For example, the less than sign (<) can be displayed using either < or <.

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Some common character entities include:

These character entities can be used in HTML documents to display special characters that would otherwise be interpreted as HTML tags. They are especially useful when working with text that contains reserved characters, such as the less than and greater than signs.

In XHTML documents, the use of character entities is affected by how the document is being processed. If the document is read by a conforming HTML 4.0 processor, then only the 252 HTML 4.0 character entities may safely be used. The use of ' or custom entity references may not be supported and may produce unpredictable results.

The five built-in XML character entities can safely be used in all XHTML processing situations: ", &, <, >, and '.

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In HTML, named character references are used to display reserved characters. There are many named character references supported by HTML.

The character reference names originate from XML Entity Definitions for Characters. These names are used to reference specific code points in the Unicode character set.

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Some character reference names have multiple forms, such as with and without a trailing semicolon, or with different capitalizations. For example, the less than sign can be represented as < or <.

Here is a list of some named character references supported by HTML:

These named character references can be used in place of the corresponding Unicode code points to display the reserved characters in HTML.

Use named entities when possible, as they are easier to remember and make your code more readable. This is especially true when dealing with characters that may not be directly supported by your page's charset.

Always verify entity codes to ensure they display correctly across all browsers and platforms. This is crucial for maintaining a consistent user experience.

Named entities use HTML5 named references by default, but you can switch to HTML4 named references or XML named references if needed.

You can choose from several options to encode special characters, including only HTML special characters, everything outside the ASCII range, everything outside ASCII printable characters, or everything outside the ASCII printable range.

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When it comes to encoding numbers for HTML entities, you can use decimal numbers (e.g., ©) or hexadecimal numbers (e.g., ©). Decimal numbers are used by default.

Here are some options for encoding special characters:

In HTML, some characters have special meanings and can cause issues if not used correctly. The less than sign (<) is one such character, and to display it, you must write < or <.

Using the ampersand (&) symbol is a common issue in HTML, but you can display it by writing &. This is useful when you need to include an ampersand in your text.

Non-breaking spaces are also important in HTML, and they can be displayed using   or  . This is especially useful when you want to add space between elements without affecting the layout.

Some symbols, like the euro (€) and yen (¥) signs, have specific entity names and numbers. For example, the euro sign can be displayed using € or €.

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Formal public identifiers are used to identify specific character subsets in HTML entities. These identifiers are crucial for referencing the correct character set in HTML documents.

The ISO entities subsets have formal public identifiers that are used to identify specific character subsets. These identifiers are used in legacy encodings before the unification within ISO 10646.

Here is a list of some common ISO entities subsets and their formal public identifiers:

Note that a version of the formal public identifier beginning with "ISO 8879-1986//" instead of "ISO 8879:1986//" is considered deprecated.