HTML Entities Character Reference: Complete List and Guide (2026)

When building websites, you often need to display characters that have special meaning in HTML (like < and >) or characters that aren't on your keyboard (like © or €). These are represented using HTML Entities.

An HTML entity can be a named entity (like ©) or a numeric entity (like ©). This guide provides a complete reference for the most commonly used HTML entities.

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1. Quick Search: Essential HTML Entities

If you just need the five "must-know" entities for security and basic markup, here they are:

Character	Entity Name	Entity Number	Description
<	&lt;	&#60;	Less than (Start of tag)
>	&gt;	&#62;	Greater than (End of tag)
&	&amp;	&#38;	Ampersand (Start of entity)
"	&quot;	&#34;	Double quotation mark
'	&apos;	&#39;	Single quotation mark / Apostrophe

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2. Complete HTML Character Reference Table

Common Characters and Symbols

Character	Entity Name	Entity Number	Description
	 	 	Non-breaking space
©	©	©	Copyright symbol
®	®	®	Registered trademark
™	™	™	Trademark symbol
§	§	§	Section sign
¶	¶	¶	Pilcrow (paragraph) sign
•	•	•	Bullet point
…	…	…	Horizontal ellipsis
—	—	—	Em dash
–	–	–	En dash

Currency Symbols

Character	Entity Name	Entity Number	Description
€	€	€	Euro sign
£	£	£	Pound sterling sign
¥	¥	¥	Yen / Yuan sign
¢	¢	¢	Cent sign
¤	¤	¤	Generic currency sign

Mathematical Operators

Character	Entity Name	Entity Number	Description
±	±	±	Plus-minus sign
×	×	×	Multiplication sign
÷	÷	÷	Division sign
√	√	√	Square root
∞	∞	∞	Infinity sign
≈	≈	≈	Almost equal to
≠	≠	≠	Not equal to
≤	≤	≤	Less-than or equal to
≥	≥	≥	Greater-than or equal to
∑	∑	∑	Summation (sigma)
∏	∏	∏	Product sign
∫	∫	∫	Integral sign

Greek Alphabet

Character	Entity Name	Entity Number	Description
α	α	α	Greek small letter alpha
β	β	β	Greek small letter beta
γ	γ	γ	Greek small letter gamma
Δ	Δ	Δ	Greek capital letter Delta
Σ	Σ	Σ	Greek capital letter Sigma
Ω	Ω	Ω	Greek capital letter Omega
π	π	π	Greek small letter pi
θ	θ	θ	Greek small letter theta

Arrows and Layout

Character	Entity Name	Entity Number	Description
←	←	←	Left arrow
↑	↑	↑	Up arrow
→	→	→	Right arrow
↓	↓	↓	Down arrow
↔	↔	↔	Left-right arrow
↵	↵	↵	Carriage return arrow

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3. Categories of HTML Entities

Reserved Characters

In HTML, some characters are reserved. For example, you cannot use the < or > signs directly in your text because the browser will mistake them for tags. You must use < and >. Similarly, the & must be encoded as & because it is the start of an entity.

Currency and Legal

Symbols like © (Copyright), ® (Registered), and various currency signs are not standard on all keyboards or might be corrupted by different character encodings (like shifting from UTF-8 to ISO-8859-1). Using entities ensures they display correctly across all systems.

Mathematical Operators

For technical writing or scientific documentation, HTML provides a wide range of mathematical symbols. While many are available in Unicode, named entities like ∞ make the code much more readable than raw character codes.

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4. Usage Tips: How to Use Entities

In HTML

Simply type the entity name or number directly into your HTML code:

<p>Copyright &copy; 2026 Tool3M</p>
<p>3 &lt; 5 is a true statement.</p>

In JavaScript

If you are setting the textContent of an element, you use the literal character. But if you are building an HTML string, use the entity:

// Correct for HTML injection
const myString = "5 × 10 = 50";
element.innerHTML = myString;

// Using Unicode in JS strings
const mySymbol = "\u00A9"; // ©

In CSS

In CSS "content" properties (used with :before or :after), you use a backslash followed by the hexadecimal value:

.copyright:before {
  content: "\00A9"; /* Unicode for © */
}

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5. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

What is the difference between an entity name and an entity number?

An entity name (like ") is a human-readable mnemonic. An entity number (like ") refers to the character's Unicode/ISO-10646 code point. Not all characters have names, but every character has a number. Numbers are generally safer for older browsers or XML contexts.

Why do I need to escape the ampersand (&)?

The ampersand & is the "trigger" character for HTML entities. If you have a URL like index.php?id=1&name=test, the &name part might be misinterpreted by some browsers as a named entity (though modern browsers are quite smart about this). To be 100% safe, always write &.

Is there a security risk with HTML entities?

Yes. Failing to encode HTML entities is the root cause of Cross-Site Scripting (XSS). If a user submits <script>alert(1)</script> and you display it directly, the browser executes the script. If you encode it as <script>..., it is displayed safely as text.

Should I use UTF-8 instead of entities?

Modern web development prefers using UTF-8 encoding throughout the stack. In a UTF-8 document, you can type characters like © or π directly. However, you must still escape the reserved characters (<, >, &, ", ') for security and syntax reasons.

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Related Tools on Tool3M

• HTML Entity Codec: Easily encode or decode text to HTML entities to prevent XSS or display special symbols.
• URL Encoder/Decoder: For encoding characters in URLs.
• JSON Formatter: Useful for ensuring your data strings are correctly escaped.