📋 HTML Entity Reference

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Showing {{ filteredEntities.length }} of {{ allEntities.length }} entities
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Character Entity Name Numeric Hex Description Actions
{{ entity.char }} &{{ entity.name }}; &#{{ entity.decimal }}; &#x{{ entity.hex }}; {{ entity.description }}
Page {{ currentPage }} of {{ totalPages }} ({{ filteredEntities.length }} total entities)
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{{ entity.char }}
{{ entity.description }}
&{{ entity.name }};
⚠️ {{ error }}

ℹ️ About HTML Entity Reference

HTML Entity Reference helps you look up the HTML character references that turn reserved markup characters and Unicode symbols into text-safe HTML. Character references are useful when a literal character would be parsed as markup, when a symbol is easier to type by name, or when you need the decimal or hexadecimal Unicode code point for generated HTML.

Reference formats:

  • Named references: mnemonic names such as & for & and © for ©.
  • Decimal numeric references: Unicode code points in base 10, such as & for &.
  • Hex numeric references: Unicode code points in base 16, such as & for &.

Practical uses:

  • Display reserved characters like <, >, &, and quotes without changing document structure.
  • Find currency, punctuation, math, Greek, accent, and arrow symbols for documentation or generated web content.
  • Compare the named, decimal, and hexadecimal forms before adding a character to templates, CMS content, email HTML, or XML-like output.
  • Debug double-encoded strings such as &amp;lt;, missing semicolons, or a symbol that renders differently across fonts.

Examples: < can be written as &lt;, &#60;, or &#x3C;; © can be written as &copy;, &#169;, or &#xA9;; and € can be written as &euro;, &#8364;, or &#x20AC;.

Limitations: Prefer normal UTF-8 text for ordinary characters and reserve entity references for markup-sensitive characters, interoperability, or clarity. Named references are case-sensitive, the semicolon should be included even when HTML accepts a few legacy omissions, and XML only provides a small predefined set unless additional entity declarations are used. Some references map to multiple Unicode code points or combining marks, so visual rendering still depends on fonts and Unicode support.

Primary sources: WHATWG HTML named character references, W3C XML Entity Definitions for Characters, and Unicode character code charts.

API Usage Example:

POST /api/tools/webdev/html-entity-reference
Content-Type: application/json

{
    "query": "amp",
    "category": "punctuation"
}
Ready