HTML and CSS Reference
In-Depth Information
aPPLyinG sPeciaL cHaracTers
Special characters, like the copyright or trademark symbols, are known in HTML as character enti-
ties. A character entity starts with an ampersand and ends with a semicolon, with either an abbrevi-
ated name or a number in between. For example, if you want the ampersand itself to be rendered
properly in HTML, it should be written in the code like this:
&
And a trademark symbol is coded like this:
™
When used in context, code that looks like this:
<p>M & J Productions is proud to present An Evening of Nerditry™
would be rendered like this:
M & J Productions is proud to present An Evening of Nerditry™
A great number of character entities exist. In addition to visible special characters, a non-breaking
space that connects two words or adds additional white space is represented in code with a char-
acter entity,
 .
Any word that requires an accent or other diacritical mark needs a character
entity. Because HTML code uses the
<and>
characters to indicate tags, if you want to use a less
than or greater than symbol in your content, you'll need to use their respective character entities:
<
and
>.
The following table shows some of the most commonly used character entities:
sPeciaL cHaracTer
syMboL
HTML cHaracTer enTiTy
non-breaking space
or  
< or <
Less than sign
<
> or >
Greater than sign
>
Copyright symbol
©
© or ©
®
Registered symbol
® or ³
Trademark symbol
™
™ or ™
Em-dash
—
— or —
En-dash
-
– or –
English pound sign
£
£ or £
European euro
€
€ or €
¥ or &165;
Japanese yen
¥
