Character Entity References (Web Design in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition)

10.8. Character Entity References

Characters not found in the normal alphanumeric character set, such as < and &, must be specified in HTML using character entities. Using the standard desktop publishing keyboard commands (such as Option-g for the © symbol) within an HTML document will not produce the desired character when the document is rendered in a browser. In fact, the browser generally displays the numeric entity for the character.

Character entities can be referenced by name (&name;) or by numeric value (&#nnn;). The browser interprets the string to display the proper character. Named entities are preferable because numeric values may be interpreted differently on different platforms.

Table 10-3 presents the character entities for commonly used special characters. The complete list appears in Appendix F, "Character Entities".

Table 10-3. Common special characters and their character entities

Character	Description	Name	Number
	Character space (nonbreaking space)	` `	` `
&	Ampersand	`&`	`&`
<	Less-than sign (useful for displaying tags on a web page)	`<`	`<`
>	Greater-than sign (useful for displaying tags on a web page)	`>`	`>`
"	Left curly quotes (nonstandard entity)	(none)	``
"	Right curly quotes (nonstandard entity)	(none)	``
	Trademark (nonstandard entity)	(none)	``
£	Pound symbol	`£`	`£`
¥	Yen symbol	`¥`	`¥`
©	Copyright symbol	`©`	`©`
®	Registered trademark	`®`	`®`