All of these characters are in the HTML 3.2 specfication. Additional characters are defined using Unicode in the HTML 4.0 specification, but they are not supported by many browsers and systems at this time.
A few characters must be specified using entities because the characters themselves are used in HTML for markup. They may be specifed using either the numeric or the descriptive code.
Entity Name | By Numeric Code | By Descriptive Code | Character |
---|---|---|---|
quotation mark | " | " | " |
ampersand | & | & | & |
less-than sign | < | < | < |
greater-than sign | > | > | > |
Additional characters were added from the ISO 8859 standard; ISO-8859-1 (Latin-1) defines characters needed for many western european languages. They may be specifed using either the numeric or the descriptive code, but some early browsers do not recoginze the descriptive codes.
They may also appear directly in the document, e.g. 2. However it is possible that these characters may be converted from 8 bit ISO 8859-1 to 7 bit ASCII by software or systems between you and your reader, so it's safer to use the numerical codes.
Entity Name | By Numeric Code | By Descriptive Code | Character |
---|---|---|---|
non-breaking space |   | | |
inverted exclamation | ¡ | ¡ | ¡ |
cent sign | ¢ | ¢ | ¢ |
pound sterling | £ | £ | £ |
general currency sign | ¤ | ¤ | ¤ |
yen sign | ¥ | ¥ | ¥ |
broken vertical bar | ¦ | ¦ | ¦ |
section sign | § | § | § |
umlaut(dieresis) | ¨ | ¨ | ¨ |
copyright | © | © | © |
feminine ordinal | ª | ª | ª |
left angle quote, guillemotleft | « | « | « |
not sign | ¬ | ¬ | ¬ |
soft hyphen | ­ | ­ | |
registered trademark | ® | ® | ® |
macron accent | ¯ | ¯ | ¯ |
degree sign | ° | ° | ° |
plus or minus | ± | ± | ± |
superscript two | ² | ² | ² |
superscript three | ³ | ³ | ³ |
acute accent | ´ | ´ | ´ |
micro sign (Mu) | µ | µ | µ |
paragraph sign (pilchow) | ¶ | ¶ | ¶ |
middle dot | · | · | · |
cedilla | ¸ | ¸ | ¸ |
superscript one | ¹ | ¹ | ¹ |
masculine ordinal | º | º | º |
right angle quote, guillemotright | » | » | » |
fraction one-fourth | ¼ | ¼ | ¼ |
fraction one-half | ½ | ½ | ½ |
fraction three-fourths | ¾ | ¾ | ¾ |
inverted question mark | ¿ | ¿ | ¿ |
capital A, grave accent | À | À | À |
capital A, acute accent | Á | Á | Á |
capital A, circumflex accent | Â | Â | Â |
capital A, tilde | Ã | Ã | Ã |
capital A, dieresis or umlaut mark | Ä | Ä | Ä |
capital A, ring (Angstrom) | Å | Å | Å |
capital AE diphthong (ligature) | Æ | Æ | Æ |
capital C, cedilla | Ç | Ç | Ç |
capital E, grave accent | È | È | È |
capital E, acute accent | É | É | É |
capital E, circumflex accent | Ê | Ê | Ê |
capital E, dieresis or umlaut mark | Ë | Ë | Ë |
capital I, grave accent | Ì | Ì | Ì |
capital I, acute accent | Í | Í | Í |
capital I, circumflex accent | Î | Î | Î |
capital I, dieresis or umlaut mark | Ï | Ï | Ï |
capital Eth, Icelandic | Ð | Ð | Ð |
capital N, tilde | Ñ | Ñ | Ñ |
capital O, grave accent | Ò | Ò | Ò |
capital O, acute accent | Ó | Ó | Ó |
capital O, circumflex accent | Ô | Ô | Ô |
capital O, tilde | Õ | Õ | Õ |
capital O, dieresis or umlaut mark | Ö | Ö | Ö |
multiply sign | × | × | × |
capital O, slash | Ø | Ø | Ø |
capital U, grave accent | Ù | Ù | Ù |
capital U, acute accent | Ú | Ú | Ú |
capital U, circumflex accent | Û | Û | Û |
capital U, dieresis or umlaut mark | Ü | Ü | Ü |
capital Y, acute accent | Ý | Ý | Ý |
capital THORN, Icelandic | Þ | Þ | Þ |
small sharp s, German (sz ligature) | ß | ß | ß |
small a, grave accent | à | à | à |
small a, acute accent | á | á | á |
small a, circumflex accent | â | â | â |
small a, tilde | ã | ã | ã |
small a, dieresis or umlaut mark | ä | ä | ä |
small a, ring | å | å | å |
small ae diphthong (ligature) | æ | æ | æ |
small c, cedilla | ç | ç | ç |
small e, grave accent | è | è | è |
small e, acute accent | é | é | é |
small e, circumflex accent | ê | ê | ê |
small e, dieresis or umlaut mark | ë | ë | ë |
small i, grave accent | ì | ì | ì |
small i, acute accent | í | í | í |
small i, circumflex accent | î | î | î |
small i, dieresis or umlaut mark | ï | ï | ï |
small eth, Icelandic | ð | ð | ð |
small n, tilde | ñ | ñ | ñ |
small o, grave accent | ò | ò | ò |
small o, acute accent | ó | ó | ó |
small o, circumflex accent | ô | ô | ô |
small o, tilde | õ | õ | õ |
small o, dieresis or umlaut mark | ö | ö | ö |
division sign | ÷ | ÷ | ÷ |
small o, slash | ø | ø | ø |
small u, grave accent | ù | ù | ù |
small u, acute accent | ú | ú | ú |
small u, circumflex accent | û | û | û |
small u, dieresis or umlaut mark | ü | ü | ü |
small y, acute accent | ý | ý | ý |
small thorn, Icelandic | þ | þ | þ |
small y, dieresis or umlaut mark | ÿ | ÿ | ÿ |
Note that characters with numeric codes from 0-31 and 128-159 are reserved for non-display characters. However, some systems, including some HTML generators, use them anyhow. They work on some browsers and some systems, but not others and are not allowed in the standard. The range 0-31 corresponds to the 'control characters' which include the familiar 'newline', 'escape', 'control-c', etc., and 128+the control characters are similarly reserved for special use.
The following line contains illegal characters which were typed into
the HTML source file. This may happen if you use tools which do not
properly implement standards. You may see symbols here, or you may
see empty rectangles or questionmarks:
If you see symbols, look for those characters in your documents and be especially careful that your documents validate; otherwise they may not look the same to others as they do for you. Most commonly, "don't" appears as don?t, since Microsoft uses some of these codes for single and double quotes. For more information, and for the source for a program which can be used to correct these problems, see the Microsoft HTML Corrector. You can also use HTML Tidy, which finds and corrects these and other problems with HTML files.