Some characters like the < character, have a special meaning in HTML, and therefore
cannot be used in the text.
To display a less than sign (<) in HTML, we have to use a
character entity.
Character Entities
Some characters have a special meaning in HTML, like the less than sign (<)
that defines the start of an HTML tag. If we want the browser to actually display
these characters we must insert character entities in the HTML
source.
A character entity has three parts: an ampersand (&), an entity name or a
# and an entity number, and finally a semicolon (;).
To display a less than sign in an HTML document we must write: <
or <
The advantage of using a name instead of a number is that a name is easier to remember. The disadvantage is that not all browsers support the
newest entity names, while the support for entity numbers is very
good in almost all browsers.
Note that the entities are case sensitive.
This example lets you experiment with character entities:
Character Entities IE only
Non-breaking Space
The most common character entity in HTML is the non-breaking space.
Normally HTML will truncate spaces in your text. If you write 10 spaces in
your text HTML will remove 9 of them. To add spaces to your text, use the
character entity.
