HTML Entities Reference

Q: What is the entity for a space?

An ordinary space needs no entity. is a no-break space, which prevents a line break at that point and is not collapsed with adjacent whitespace.

Named, decimal and hexadecimal character references grouped by what you are actually looking for — punctuation, currency, maths, arrows, Greek, accents and symbols.

Updated: 2 August 2026Read: 8 minRuns: 100% in your browser

How character references work

A character reference is a way of writing a character using only ASCII. All three forms below produce exactly the same output:

&copy;     named reference
&#169;     decimal numeric reference
&#xA9;     hexadecimal numeric reference

All must end with a semicolon. HTML5 tolerates some missing semicolons for historical compatibility, but omitting them produces ambiguity and should be treated as an error.

Named references only exist for about 2,200 characters. Numeric references work for every Unicode code point, including emoji: 😀 is 😀.

You usually do not need them. With <meta charset="utf-8"> declared, write accented letters, symbols and emoji directly. Reserve references for the five HTML syntax characters, invisible characters, and code samples that display markup. The entity encoder converts either way.

Filter

Reference tables by category

Required in HTML

Char	Named	Decimal	Hex	Description
&	&	&	&	Ampersand
<	<	<	<	Less-than sign
>	>	>	>	Greater-than sign
"	"	"	"	Quotation mark
'	'	'	'	Apostrophe

Spaces and dashes

Char	Named	Decimal	Hex	Description
				No-break space
	&ensp;			En space
	&emsp;			Em space
				Thin space
	&ZeroWidthSpace;			Zero-width space
–	–	–	–	En dash
—	—	—	—	Em dash
−	−	−	−	Minus sign
				Soft hyphen

Quotes and punctuation

Char	Named	Decimal	Hex	Description
‘	‘	‘	‘	Left single quote
’	’	’	’	Right single quote / apostrophe
“	“	“	“	Left double quote
”	”	”	”	Right double quote
«	«	«	«	Left guillemet
»	»	»	»	Right guillemet
…	…	…	…	Horizontal ellipsis
•	•	•	•	Bullet
·	·	·	·	Middle dot
†	&dagger;	†	†	Dagger
§	§	§	§	Section sign
¶	¶	¶	¶	Pilcrow
¿	¿	¿	¿	Inverted question mark
¡	¡	¡	¡	Inverted exclamation mark

Currency

Char	Named	Decimal	Hex	Description
€	€	€	€	Euro
£	£	£	£	Pound sterling
¥	¥	¥	¥	Yen
¢	¢	¢	¢	Cent
¤	¤	¤	¤	Generic currency
₹	—	₹	₹	Indian rupee
₽	—	₽	₽	Russian ruble

Legal and commercial

Char	Named	Decimal	Hex	Description
©	©	©	©	Copyright
®	®	®	®	Registered
™	™	™	™	Trade mark
℗	&copysr;	℗	℗	Sound recording copyright

Mathematics

Char	Named	Decimal	Hex	Description
×	×	×	×	Multiplication
÷	÷	÷	÷	Division
±	±	±	±	Plus-minus
≤	≤	≤	≤	Less or equal
≥	≥	≥	≥	Greater or equal
≠	≠	≠	≠	Not equal
≈	≈	≈	≈	Approximately equal
∞	∞	∞	∞	Infinity
√	√	√	√	Square root
∑	∑	∑	∑	N-ary summation
∏	∏	∏	∏	N-ary product
∫	∫	∫	∫	Integral
∂	∂	∂	∂	Partial differential
°	°	°	°	Degree
½	½	½	½	One half
¼	¼	¼	¼	One quarter
¾	¾	¾	¾	Three quarters
′	′	′	′	Prime / minutes
″	″	″	″	Double prime / seconds

Arrows

Char	Named	Decimal	Hex	Description
←	←	←	←	Leftwards
→	→	→	→	Rightwards
↑	↑	↑	↑	Upwards
↓	↓	↓	↓	Downwards
↔	↔	↔	↔	Left right
⇐	⇐	⇐	⇐	Double leftwards
⇒	⇒	⇒	⇒	Double rightwards
↵	&crarr;	↵	↵	Carriage return

Greek letters

Char	Named	Decimal	Hex	Description
α	α	α	α	alpha
β	β	β	β	beta
γ	γ	γ	γ	gamma
δ	δ	δ	δ	delta
ε	ε	ε	ε	epsilon
θ	θ	θ	θ	theta
λ	λ	λ	λ	lambda
μ	μ	μ	μ	mu
π	π	π	π	pi
σ	σ	σ	σ	sigma
φ	φ	φ	φ	phi
ω	ω	ω	ω	omega
Δ	Δ	Δ	Δ	Delta
Σ	Σ	Σ	Σ	Sigma
Ω	Ω	Ω	Ω	Omega

Accented Latin

Char	Named	Decimal	Hex	Description
à	à	à	à	a grave
á	á	á	á	a acute
â	â	â	â	a circumflex
ä	ä	ä	ä	a diaeresis
å	å	å	å	a ring
æ	æ	æ	æ	ae ligature
ç	ç	ç	ç	c cedilla
è	è	è	è	e grave
é	é	é	é	e acute
ê	ê	ê	ê	e circumflex
ñ	ñ	ñ	ñ	n tilde
ó	ó	ó	ó	o acute
ö	ö	ö	ö	o diaeresis
ø	ø	ø	ø	o slash
ü	ü	ü	ü	u diaeresis
ß	ß	ß	ß	sharp s

Symbols and shapes

Char	Named	Decimal	Hex	Description
★	&starf;	★	★	Black star
☆	&star;	☆	☆	White star
♥	&hearts;	♥	♥	Black heart
♠	&spades;	♠	♠	Black spade
✓	&check;	✓	✓	Check mark
✗	&cross;	✗	✗	Ballot X
✔	&checkmark;	✔	✔	Heavy check mark
▶	—	▶	▶	Black right triangle
⭐	—	⭐	⭐	White medium star
✓	—	✓	✓	Tick

Three things that trip people up

  is not a spacing tool

A no-break space prevents a line break and is not collapsed with neighbouring whitespace. Legitimate uses: between a number and its unit (10 kg), between a name and an initial, before a French colon. Using strings of   to indent or space content is a layout job for CSS margins and padding.

XML only knows five names

XML predefines exactly &, <, >, " and '. Anything else —   included — is undefined and makes the document invalid unless declared in a DTD. This catches people out in RSS feeds, sitemaps and SVG.

' and older browsers

' is valid HTML5 and XML but was not defined in HTML4, so very old browsers rendered it literally. In modern code it is fine; if you support genuinely ancient clients, use '.

Emoji and astral characters

Characters above U+FFFF — emoji, historic scripts, many mathematical symbols — live in the astral planes and need four bytes in UTF-8 or a surrogate pair in UTF-16. As numeric references they work exactly like any other character:

&#x1F600;  😀  grinning face
&#x1F680;  🚀  rocket
&#x2764;   ❤   heavy black heart
&#x1F1EB;&#x1F1F7;  🇫🇷  regional indicators F + R = French flag

Many emoji are sequences rather than single code points. Flags are pairs of regional indicators; family and skin-tone emoji use zero-width joiners. That is why '👨‍👩‍👧'.length is 8 in JavaScript, not 1. Inspect the underlying bytes in the text to binary converter.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is an HTML entity?

A way of writing a character using only ASCII, either by name (©) or by code point (©). The parser converts it back to the real character.

Do I need entities for accented characters?

No, as long as your page declares UTF-8. Write them directly — it is more readable, searchable and editable.

What is the entity for a space?

An ordinary space needs no entity.   is a no-break space, which prevents a line break at that point and is not collapsed with adjacent whitespace.

Can I use HTML entities in XML?

Only the five predefined ones: amp, lt, gt, quot and apos. Any other named entity makes an XML document invalid unless it is declared.

How do I write emoji as entities?

Use a hexadecimal numeric reference with the code point, such as 😀. Composite emoji need every code point in the sequence, including zero-width joiners.

How many named entities are there?

About 2,231 in the HTML5 specification, including some duplicates with and without trailing semicolons kept for backwards compatibility.

Sources & further reading

WHATWG HTML: Named character references — the complete authoritative list
W3C i18n: Using character escapes — when escaping helps and when it hurts
Unicode: Full emoji list — code points for every standard emoji
XML 1.0: Predefined entities — the five names XML actually defines