HTML Entities and Character References: Showing <, > and & and Special Symbols

Some characters have a special job in HTML. The < character starts a tag and & starts a character reference, so if you want to show them as text you need another way to write them. That way is a character reference, often called an entity.

The problem#

Suppose you want a page to say "Use the <p> tag for paragraphs":

<p>Use the <p> tag for paragraphs.</p>

The browser reads <p> as a real tag, so it disappears and starts a new paragraph. To display it, write < for < and > for >:

<p>Use the &lt;p&gt; tag for paragraphs.</p>

The essential references#

Every reference starts with & and ends with ;.

<p>Tom &amp; Jerry</p>
<p>5 &lt; 10 and 10 &gt; 5</p>
<p title="He said &quot;hello&quot;">Hover over me.</p>

Named and numeric references#

Characters can be written three ways:

<p>&copy; 2026 Laviyx Learn &middot; Prices in &#8377; and &euro;</p>
<p>Arrows: &larr; &rarr; &uarr; &darr; &mdash; &hellip;</p>

Numeric references work for any Unicode character, even ones without a name. For example, ₹ is the Indian rupee sign ₹ (Unicode U+20B9; there is no widely supported named reference for it).

Just type the character#

With <meta charset="utf-8"> in your page and the file saved as UTF-8, you can type most characters directly: ©, ₹, €, é, 😊, हिन्दी. This is easier to read than references.

You still need references for:

• < and & in text, because they have special meaning.
• Quotes inside attribute values that use the same quote.
• Invisible characters that are hard to see in an editor, such as  .

Common symbols#

Common mistakes#

Practice#

<p>Write &lt;br&gt; for a line break &amp; &lt;hr&gt; for a break in topic.</p>
<p>&copy; 2026 My Site</p>

Key takeaway#