HTML Entities

The HTML entities are used to display reserved characters (characters that are used in HTML code), special characters, or invisible characters. For example,

<p>This is a &lt;p&gt; tag.</p> 

Browser Output

Here, < and > are the HTML entities used to display < and > respectively.

If we were to use the <p> tag instead of <p> the browser would read it as a tag. Hence to display <p> we need to use < and > instead of < and > respectively.

HTML Entities Syntax

HTML entities are represented by either their name or their number.

• Entity names

We use &entity_name; to add reserved characters using Entity names. For example,
¢ would be displayed as ¢

• Entity number

We use &#entity_number; to add reserved characters using Entity number. For example, ¢ would also be displayed as ¢

All entity names and numbers start with an & and end with an ;.

Note: Not all entities have names, only characters that are commonly used have entity names.

Special Characters

Special characters are characters that are not available on a general keyboard like ®, ©, ¢, etc.
We use HTML entities to add special characters to HTML documents. For example

<footer> &copy; 2022 Programiz. All rights reserved. </footer>

Browser Output

Invisible Characters

An invisible character is a character that is not visible when rendered in a document or text field. These characters can be used for various purposes, such as adding white space or formatting a document. For example,

<p>Invi<span>&zwnj;</span>sible<span>&nbsp;</span>Cha<span>&zwnj;</span>racters</p>

Browser Output

Here, ‌ and   are invisible characters. ‌ is a zero-width character whereas   is a space character.

Some examples of invisible characters are – space, tab, zero-width space, etc.

Some important HTML entities