Character Entities

In order to display special symbols like <, >, &, “having some predefined meaning we use character entities because that cannot display directly in web pages. Entities are represented with entity name. These are starts with an ampersand (&) symbol and ends with semi colon (;). There are two ways.

Syntax1: &entityname;

Eg:1) 20 < 30  Þ  20 & lt ; 30     

                           

(or) 

 Syntax2: &entitynumber;  

                                              

Eg: 2) 20 & # 60 30 Þ 20 < 30

To display ‘< ‘sign in html page we must write & lt; or &#60 because it treats it as. Instruction.

Entities are case sensitive, we can use only lower case letters to write entities.

Eg:Good---Morning.     [Non breaking space-nbsp]

Good &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Morning.

The most common character entities are:

Result	Description	Entity name	Entity number
1. Space	Non breaking space	& nbsp ;	& = & & # 160 ;
2. <	Less than	& lt ;	& # 60 ;
3. >	Greater than	& gt ;	& # 62 ;
4. &	ampresend	& amp ;	& # 38 ;
5. “	(double quote quotation  mark)	& quote ;	& # 34 ;

Eg: u & i sing“Happy Birthday “ song.

       u &amp; I sing  &quote; Happy Birthday &quote; song.