HTML Entities

One of the problems of using code to define web pages is what happens when you want to display that code on a web page without the code actually getting executed? Or, what if you need to have quotation marks inside something that is enclosed by quotation marks - how will the browser know which are quotation marks that should be displayed, and which are the enclosures?

The general term for this is "entities", and we also use the same method to display characters that may not appear on a normal keyboard (special symbols, etc.).

There are two ways to display an entity and both involve the & symbol.

&entity_name;

or

&#entity_number;

We typically use entity names when it's something we use a lot and can remember, but use entity numbers for things we don't use that often or don't remember. As you might imagine, the list is quite long.

So, for example, for the < sign we can use &lt; or &#60; - both will work.

Some of the more frequently used entities are:

&nbsp; non-breaking space (can hard-code spaces in that the browser won't ignore)

&gt; greater than symbol >

&amp; the ampersand itself & (ooh, meta)

&cent; the cent sign ¢

&copy; copyright symbol