---
id: html-entities
title: "HTML Entities"
category: "Frontend"
status: "draft"
verification_status: "conceptual"
canonical_id: ""
aliases: ["character entities", "reserved characters", "non-breaking space", "nbsp", "entity name", "entity number", "diacritical marks"]
duplicate_of: ""
source_trust_level: "B"
confidence_score: 0.90
created_at: 2026-06-23
updated_at: 2026-06-23
review_reason: ""
merge_history: []
tags: ["html", "web", "frontend", "w3schools", "entities", "characters"]
raw_sources: ["https://www.w3schools.com/html/html_entities.asp"]
applied_in: []
github_commit: ""
---
# [[HTML Entities]]
## ๐ฏ ํ ์ค ํต์ฐฐ (One-line insight)
Reserved characters in HTML must be replaced with entities โ written as an entity name (`&name;`) or an entity number (`&#number;`) โ so the browser does not confuse them with tags. [S1]
## ๐ง ํต์ฌ ๊ฐ๋
(Core concepts)
- **Reserved characters need entities** โ characters like `<` and `>` are reserved; if used directly in text, the browser might mix them up with tags. [S1]
- **Two entity forms** โ entity names (`&entity_name;`) or entity numbers (`&#entity_number;`) can both display reserved characters. [S1]
- **Names are easier** โ entity names are easier to remember than entity numbers. [S1]
- **Names are case sensitive** โ entity names must use the correct case. [S1]
- **Non-breaking space (` `)** โ a space that will not break into a new line and prevents the browser from truncating consecutive spaces. [S1]
- **Combining diacritical marks** โ marks can combine with alphanumeric characters to produce characters not present in the page's encoding. [S1]
## ๐งฉ ์ถ์ถ๋ ํจํด (Extracted patterns)
- **Less-than** โ `<` or `<` displays `<`. [S1]
- **Greater-than** โ `>` or `>` displays `>`. [S1]
- **Ampersand** โ `&` displays `&`. [S1]
- **Non-breaking space** โ ` ` keeps two words on the same line (e.g. `10 km/h`, `10 PM`) and adds real spaces. [S1]
- **Combining mark** โ base char + mark number, e.g. `à` โ `ร `. [S1]
## ๐ ์ธ๋ถ ๋ด์ฉ (Details)
**Reserved characters**
Some characters are reserved in HTML. If you use the less-than (`<`) or greater-than (`>`) signs in your HTML text, the browser might mix them with tags. Entity names or entity numbers can be used to display reserved HTML characters. [S1]
- `<` (less than) = `<`
- `>` (greater than) = `>`
**Entity syntax**
An entity is written either as a name or as a number: [S1]
```text
&entity_name;
&#entity_number;
```
For example, to display a less-than sign (`<`) we must write `<` or `<`. Entity names are easier to remember than entity numbers. [S1]
> Note: Entity names are case sensitive. [S1]
**Non-breaking space**
A commonly used HTML entity is the non-breaking space: ` `. A non-breaking space is a space that will not break into a new line. Two words separated by a non-breaking space will stick together (not break into a new line). This is handy when breaking the words might be disruptive, for example: [S1]
- `ยง 10`
- `10 km/h`
- `10 PM`
Another common use of the non-breaking space is to prevent browsers from truncating spaces in HTML pages. If you write 10 spaces in your text, the browser will remove 9 of them; to add real spaces to your text, you can use the ` ` character entity. The non-breaking hyphen (`‑`) is used to define a hyphen character (`โ`) that does not break into a new line. [S1]
**Some useful HTML character entities**
| Result | Description | Name | Number |
|---|---|---|---|
| (space) | non-breaking space | ` ` | ` ` |
| < | less than | `<` | `<` |
| > | greater than | `>` | `>` |
| & | ampersand | `&` | `&` |
| " | double quotation mark | `"` | `"` |
| ' | single quotation mark | `'` | `'` |
| ยข | cent | `¢` | `¢` |
| ยฃ | pound | `£` | `£` |
| ยฅ | yen | `¥` | `¥` |
| โฌ | euro | `€` | `€` |
| ยฉ | copyright | `©` | `©` |
| ยฎ | registered trademark | `®` | `®` |
| โข | trademark | `™` | `™` |
[S1]
**Combining diacritical marks**
A diacritical mark is a "glyph" added to a letter. Some diacritical marks, like grave ( ฬ) and acute ( ฬ), are called accents. Diacritical marks can be used in combination with alphanumeric characters to produce a character that is not present in the character set (encoding) used in the page. [S1]
| Mark | Character | Construct | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| ฬ | a | `à` | ร |
| ฬ | a | `á` | รก |
| ฬ | a | `â` | รข |
| ฬ | a | `ã` | รฃ |
| ฬ | O | `Ò` | ร |
| ฬ | O | `Ó` | ร |
| ฬ | O | `Ô` | ร |
| ฬ | O | `Õ` | ร |
[S1]
## ๐ ๏ธ ์ ์ฉ ์ฌ๋ก (Applied in summary)
The reserved-character substitutions (`<`, `>`, `&`), the ` ` usage examples (`10 km/h`, `10 PM`, preserving spaces), and the combining-mark constructs (`à` โ ร ) are the canonical applied examples. No external project/commit applications found in the source.
## ๐ป ์ฝ๋ ํจํด (Code patterns)
Display a literal less-than sign:
```html
<
<
```
Keep two words on the same line:
```html
10 km/h
```
Combine a base character with a diacritical mark:
```html
à
```
## โ๏ธ ๋น๊ต ๋ฐ ์ ํ ๊ธฐ์ค (Comparison & decision criteria)
- **Entity name (`<`)** โ easier to remember; case sensitive. [S1]
- **Entity number (`<`)** โ numeric alternative producing the same character. [S1]
## โ๏ธ ๋ชจ์ ๋ฐ ์
๋ฐ์ดํธ (Contradictions & updates)
No contradictions found in the source.
## โ
๊ฒ์ฆ ์ํ ๋ฐ ์ ๋ขฐ๋
- **์ํ:** draft
- **๊ฒ์ฆ ๋จ๊ณ:** conceptual (์ค์ ์ ์ฉ ์ฌ๋ก ๋ฐ๊ฒฌ ์ applied/validated๋ก ์น๊ฒฉ ๊ฐ๋ฅ)
- **์ถ์ฒ ์ ๋ขฐ๋:** B (W3Schools โ widely used educational reference, not a primary standards body)
- **์ ๋ขฐ ์ ์:** 0.90
- **์ค๋ณต ๊ฒ์ฌ ๊ฒฐ๊ณผ:** ์ ๊ท ์์ฑ (New discovery)
## ๐ ์ง์ ๊ทธ๋ํ (Knowledge Graph)
- **์์/๋ฃจํธ:** [[HTML Tutorial]]
- **๊ด๋ จ ๊ฐ๋
:** [[HTML Symbols]], [[HTML Charset]], [[HTML Formatting]], [[HTML Introduction]]
- **์ฐธ์กฐ ๋งฅ๋ฝ:** Referenced whenever reserved characters, special symbols, real spaces, or accented characters must be displayed safely in HTML text.
## ๐ ์ถ์ฒ (Sources)
- [S1] W3Schools โ HTML Entities โ https://www.w3schools.com/html/html_entities.asp
## ๐ ๋ณ๊ฒฝ ์ด๋ ฅ (Change history)
- 2026-06-23: Initial draft synthesized from the W3Schools "HTML Entities" page (Astra wiki-curation, P-Reinforce v3.1 format).