Some characters in HTML require special codes, known as an HTML entity, extended HTML, or encoded HTML, to be seen in a browser. If these codes are not used, you may see a box, question mark (see picture), garbage, or the page will not load. Most people encounter this problem when entering characters such as &,",>, and < in their HTML.

With the less than and greater than, these are reserved characters and cannot be used in your HTML code because the HTML markup uses these characters. Using these characters instead of the extended HTML code can prevent the page from loading properly.

To insert a “<” or “>” or any extended HTML into your HTML, instead of using these characters type the HTML entity. For example, the less than ( < ) is “<” and the greater than ( > ) is “>”. All HTML entities begins with an ampersand (&) and is finished with a semicolon ( ; ). ISO codes are also shown below but can be more difficult to remember.

List of extended special HTML characters and code

If you’re using a WYSIWYG web page editor, make sure you’re inserting these codes into the HTML editor portion of the page and not the page layout or WYSIWYG section of the editor.

The HTML entities mentioned below are case-sensitive. In other words, ′ and ″ give two different symbols.

See our currency definition for a full listing of currencies and their associated HTML decimal values.

  • HTML and web design help and information.
  • Computer keyboard key explanations.