HTML Entities: Writing Special Characters

You are writing a page about maths and type if a < b. The browser sees < and thinks a tag is starting. Characters that HTML uses for its own syntax need a safe way to appear as plain text, and that way is the entity.

The rule

Ampersand, name, semicolon: a character HTML cannot take literally.

An entity is a short code that the browser replaces with a single character. It always starts with & and ends with ;. The ones you will use most:

The visitor sees "In HTML, a paragraph starts with <p>." and "Fish & chips, © 2026 Harbour Cafe".

Entities can also use numbers. © and © both mean ©, using its Unicode code point in decimal or hexadecimal.

Do you need entities for every accented letter or emoji? No. If your page declares UTF-8 encoding (you will do this with a meta tag soon), you can type é, ₹ or 🌧 directly. Entities are essential only for characters that clash with HTML syntax, mainly < and &, and handy for invisible ones like  .

The shortcut

Before typing a symbol, ask: "Could the browser mistake this for markup?" If yes, use an entity.

The trap is forgetting the semicolon. &copy without ; may work by luck in some cases, but the rule is to always close entities with a semicolon.

Drills

Answer fast — trust the rule.

Remember

• Entity = & + name or number + ;, replaced by one character.
• Shortcut: if the browser could mistake a character for markup, escape it (<, &).
• Trap: forgetting the semicolon, or escaping everything when UTF-8 already handles it.