The keyboard contains only alphabet, numbers and some punctuation marks. What if you wanted to include a © symbol on your pages like I have (scroll down this page, and you shall find this symbol). Such symbols are special characters called Character Entities, which can be displayed in HTML pages using a certain notation.
This notation can be of two types:
&entity-name-shortform;
&#number;
Thus, the copyright sign can be displayed by © or © Here are a few common characters which you might need for your pages:
I had mentioned at the beginning that HTML is case insensitive and so, it doesn't make a difference if you write <FONT>, <font>, <Font> or <FoNt> (... hope you get the general idea!). Character entities, however, are case sensitive- will work but &NBSP; won't. Try it out yourself.
Name Notation Number Notation Special Character
& & &
< < <
> > >
™ ™ â,,¢
Empty space
¢ ¢ ¢
£ £ £
¥ ¥ Â¥
© © ©
® ® ®
° ° °
¼ ¼ ¼
½ ½ ½
¾ ¾ ¾
The entire list of character entities can be found here.
Remember, all tags in HTML are enclosed by < and > signs. To display these signs, you have to use their special character notations. Thus, to display <HTML>, you have to write the < and > signs in their special notations as <HTML>.