HTML Entities Reference

Last reviewed on May 7, 2026

An HTML entity is a way to write a character in source code without writing the character itself. They come in three forms: named entities (©), decimal numeric entities (©), and hexadecimal numeric entities (©). All three produce the same output character.

This page is a practical reference: which named entities are worth memorizing, when to use a numeric entity instead, and how to handle the five characters that the HTML parser treats as special.

The five reserved characters

HTML reserves five characters for its own syntax. Inside the body of a page, three of them must be written as entities or the parser will misread them:

The ampersand is the trickiest one. If you write Tom & Jerry in source, modern browsers usually display it correctly — but XML and stricter parsers will reject it. Always use & when you mean an ampersand.

Whitespace and invisible characters

The non-breaking space ( ) is the most-used named entity on the web after the reserved characters. Use it between a number and its unit, between a person's title and surname, and anywhere a line break would create an awkward read. It is also a quick way to insert visible spacing the browser will not collapse.

Punctuation entities worth memorizing

The following named entities all have a longer numeric equivalent, but the named form is shorter and reads better in source.

For more on each, see the punctuation and special page.

Currency entities

The dollar sign has no named entity — it's an ASCII character and you write it directly. Newer currency signs (the Indian rupee ₹, the bitcoin sign ₿) only have numeric entities. Browse the full list on the currency symbols page.

Mathematical entities

The math operators on the web have memorable named entities for the most-used ones:

The full math reference is on mathematical symbols.

Greek letter entities

Greek lowercase letters use the obvious names: α, β, γ, δ, π, σ, μ, ω, and so on. Capitals use the capitalized name: Α, Β, Π, Ω. The Greek letters page lists every one.

Heart, arrow, and other symbol entities

The four card-suit hearts and arrows are the most-used named entities outside the reserved-character set. See hearts and love and arrows for the full sets.

When to use named vs. numeric entities

Use the named form when the entity is in the short list of widely-supported names (the ones above are all safe). Named entities are easier to read in source and easier to remember.

Use a numeric entity when:

• The character has no named entity in HTML4 and you're targeting older parsers. (HTML5 added many more names but XML-based tooling may not understand them.)
• You're writing XML, where only the five reserved entities are guaranteed. XML treats © as an undefined reference unless you declare it.
• You want to be unambiguous in code that travels through several parsers.

Use the literal character — just paste the symbol — when the file is encoded as UTF-8 and your editor handles it cleanly. UTF-8 is the dominant web encoding and most editors handle it correctly. The literal form reads better than the entity in source, and it's what most modern HTML examples use.

Common mistakes

1. Forgetting the trailing semicolon. &copy is not ©. Most browsers tolerate the missing semicolon for a few legacy entities, but it's not portable.
2. Capitalization. Named entities are case-sensitive. Λ is the capital Greek lambda; λ is the lowercase. © is not a valid entity.
3. Double-escaping. If your CMS already converts ampersands, writing © outputs the literal text ©, not the copyright sign. Check your platform's escaping behavior.
4. Using entities inside <script> or <style>. HTML entity parsing does not happen inside script or style blocks. Use the language's own escape: "\\u00A9" in JavaScript, "\\A9 " in CSS.
5. Using the wrong dash. A hyphen-minus (-) is not an en dash (–) is not an em dash (—). For ranges of numbers, the en dash is correct.

If you have a code point but not the entity

The Unicode converter turns a code point into the literal character; from there you can write either the literal or the numeric entity (decimal or hex). For specific symbols, look them up by name on the home page — every symbol's page lists its decimal and HTML entity codes.