HTML Entity Encoder and Decoder

How to use the HTML entity encoder

1. 1 Pick a direction. Encode turns characters into entities, Decode turns entities back into characters.
2. 2 Type or paste your text. The result updates as you type, there is nothing to submit.
3. 3 When encoding, choose whether to convert only <, >, &, " and ', or also accented letters and symbols, and which entity format to use.
4. 4 Copy the result with the Copy button. Swap moves it to the input so you can check that it converts back.

What the tool can do

• decodes all 2,000+ named HTML5 entities as well as numeric entities, exactly the way a browser does
• correctly handles emoji too, for example 😀 becomes 😀
• warns you when the text already contains entities or has been encoded twice, and offers a one-click fix
• encodes to named, decimal or hexadecimal entities
• leaves line breaks, tabs and the rest of the text untouched
• runs entirely in your browser, nothing is sent to a server

What are HTML entities?

An HTML entity is a way of writing a character using ordinary letters and digits. It starts with & and ends with a semicolon: < stands for < and © for ©. You mostly need entities for characters that have a special meaning in HTML. If you typed <b> straight into a page, the browser would treat it as a tag and show the following text in bold. Written as <b>, it displays exactly as <b>.

What is the difference between HTML entities and Unicode?

Unicode is the worldwide character table in which every character has its own number, for example © is number 169 (U+00A9). An HTML entity is just a way of writing that character in HTML code. The numeric entity © contains the Unicode number directly, the named entity © is a readable shortcut for it. On a UTF-8 page you can also type the character directly, the result is the same.

Which characters must be escaped in HTML

On a UTF-8 page, only five characters need to be replaced with entities. Everything else, including accented letters, can be written directly. The first of them, &, is called the ampersand. It started out as a ligature of the letters in the Latin word et, meaning "and".

These are exactly the five characters escaped by PHP's htmlspecialchars function and by auto-escaping in Blade, Twig and React.

Named, decimal and hex entities

The same character can be written in three ways. Browsers display them identically, only the notation differs.

• A named entity like © is easy to read, but only some characters have a name.
• A decimal entity © contains the character's Unicode code point and works for any character, including emoji.
• A hex entity © is the same number in hexadecimal, the notation Unicode normally uses, for example U+00A9.

Entity names are case-sensitive: É is uppercase É, é is lowercase é.

List of HTML entities and special characters

The most commonly used entities, grouped by category. Click an entity to copy it. You can search by name, description, the character itself or its number, for example 8226.

Characters without a name, such as ✔ or emoji, can only be written as numeric entities. The CSS column shows the value for the content property, see the section on CSS and JavaScript for details.

How to make bullet points in HTML?

For a bulleted list, use the <ul> and <li> tags. The browser adds the bullets itself and you can change their shape in CSS, for example list-style-type: square for squares or list-style-type: "✓ " for check marks. Use the • entity only when you need a bullet inside a line of text, for example in a footer: Contact • Privacy policy.

How to type an arrow in HTML, CSS and on the keyboard

The most common arrows and triangles, with every way to write them. Type the code from the Word column into a document and press Alt+X right after it, and Word turns it into the character.

Type Alt codes while holding the left Alt key, using the numeric keypad, the number keys above the letters do not work. Word also automatically turns --> into →, <-- into ← and ==> into ⇒. The triangles ▲ and ▼ have no named entity, so write them as numeric entities.

How to type ©, ® and ™

The copyright, registered trademark and trademark symbols most often go in a website footer. Here is how to type them in HTML and in everyday apps:

The Mac shortcuts are for the US keyboard layout. With a different layout, open the Character Viewer with Ctrl+Cmd+Space and search for the symbol. In Word, (c), (r) and (tm) turn into the symbol automatically. In a website footer, just write something like © 2026 Company Name.

How to type a symbol that is not on your keyboard

If you need a symbol in ordinary text rather than in HTML code, you do not need an entity. On Windows 10 and 11, press Win+period to open the emoji and symbol panel, on a Mac press Ctrl+Cmd+Space. You can also copy the symbol from the list above. On Windows, the built-in Character Map app is another option.

Non-breaking space  

A non-breaking space looks like a regular space, but the browser will never break a line at it. In English it keeps together things that look wrong when split across two lines:

10 km

a number and its unit, for example 25 °C, 5 kg or 100 MB

Mr. Smith

titles and names, for example Mr. Smith or Dr. Jones

October 2

dates, so the month and day stay together

page 12

page, chapter and figure numbers

9:30 a.m.

times, and product or version names such as Windows 11

For long words in narrow columns, try ­, the soft hyphen: the browser splits the word there and adds a hyphen only when the word does not fit on the line.

How to insert a non-breaking space in Word, Excel or on a Mac

Word on Windows

Ctrl+Shift+Space

Excel, PowerPoint and other Windows apps

Alt+0160 on the numeric keypad

Mac

Option+Space in most apps

Google Docs

Insert, then Special characters, and search for "no-break space"

Anywhere

copy it from the HTML entities list above by clicking the character

Why does   show up in my email or message?

If you received an email, text message or chat message containing “ ”, it is not an abbreviation or a hidden link. The sender or the app copied the text from a web page and did not convert the non-breaking space entity back into a character. There should simply be a regular space in its place. In the same way, you may see & instead of & or " instead of quotation marks. If you want clean text, paste it into the tool above and choose Decode.

How to add multiple spaces in HTML

Browsers collapse several spaces, tabs and line breaks in a row into a single space. That is why the page does not show how many spaces you typed in the code. Depending on what you need, you have these options:

John  Smith

one or two non-breaking spaces between words that will not collapse

a b

a wider space,   is as wide as the letter n and   as wide as the letter m

p { text-indent: 2em; }

indent the first line of a paragraph instead of a row of   entities

.icon { margin-right: 0.5rem; }

space between elements, for example between an icon and text

.code { white-space: pre-wrap; }

keeps spaces and line breaks exactly as they are in the text

Indenting or aligning text with a row of   entities is not worth it: the layout falls apart on a different screen width. Page layout is what CSS is for.

How to add a line break and line spacing in HTML

The browser displays a line break in your code as an ordinary space, and the same goes for the 
 entity. New lines and larger gaps are made differently:

First line<br>Second line

a new line within one paragraph, for example in an address

<p>Paragraph</p>

a new paragraph, the browser adds space before and after it

p { line-height: 1.6; }

line height, that is the spacing between lines in a paragraph

p { margin-bottom: 1.5em; }

spacing between paragraphs

.address { white-space: pre-line; }

keeps the line breaks from the text, for example from a form

The 
 entity creates a new line only where line breaks are preserved: inside <textarea> and <pre> tags, or in the title attribute, where it produces a two-line tooltip. If you are looking for the Enter key symbol, it is ↵ (↵) or ⏎ (⏎).

Do I need entities for accented letters?

No, as long as your page uses UTF-8, which is the standard today. Just make sure the head contains <meta charset="utf-8"> and write letters like é, ü, ñ or ø directly, whether in names or loanwords like café. Numeric forms like é date back to the era of ISO-8859-1 and Windows-1252, when accented letters could easily turn into garbled characters on another computer. Today they are only useful in rare cases, for example for a system that cannot handle UTF-8, or when you want plain ASCII in your source code. That is what the Also encode accents and symbols option is for.

Accented letters show up as garbled characters

When you see strange characters instead of “Dvořák café”, it is almost always an encoding mismatch. What exactly you see tells you where the problem is:

If you see code like é or é instead of a letter, it is not an encoding problem but double-encoded entities. You will find the fix in the section on common mistakes.

HTML entities and security (XSS)

Escaping <, >, &, " and ' is the basic defense against XSS, an attack where someone injects their own script into your page. When the input <script> is output as <script>, the browser just displays it and does not run it. But it has its limits:

• Entities only protect page text and attributes whose value is in quotes. An unquoted attribute such as title=value can be broken out of with a simple space.
• They do not protect inside JavaScript, CSS or link URLs. A link to javascript:alert(1) contains nothing that would be encoded, yet it still runs code. Validate URLs from user input separately.
• In event handler attributes like onclick, the browser decodes entities before running the code, so they offer no protection there.
• Encode at output time, when writing to HTML, not when saving to the database. Otherwise you can easily end up encoding the text twice.
• The safest approach is to let a template engine that escapes automatically handle it, such as Blade, Twig, React or Vue.

HTML entities in CSS and JavaScript

Entities only work in HTML. In CSS and JavaScript strings the same character is written differently, and → would show up literally. Here is the arrow → in each language:

HTML

<span>&rarr;</span>  or  <span>&#8594;</span>

CSS

.next::after { content: "\2192"; }

JavaScript

element.textContent = "\u2192";

JavaScript (emoji)

element.textContent = "\u{1F600}";

You will find the CSS value for every entity in the list above. If the code in CSS is followed by another letter from a to f or a digit, separate them with a space, otherwise they will be read as part of the code.

Do HTML entities work in React and Markdown?

HTML entities in PHP, JavaScript and Python

Most languages have built-in ways to encode entities, so you do not need to write your own. Here is how it looks in the most popular ones:

$text = 'Tom & Jerry <3';

echo htmlspecialchars($text, ENT_QUOTES | ENT_HTML5, 'UTF-8');
// Tom &amp; Jerry &lt;3

echo html_entity_decode('&lt;p&gt;&copy; 2026&lt;/p&gt;', ENT_QUOTES | ENT_HTML5, 'UTF-8');
// <p>© 2026</p>

{{ $comment }}     {{-- escapes automatically --}}
{!! $html !!}      {{-- outputs without escaping --}}

e('Tom & Jerry'); // Tom & Jerry

function escapeHtml(text) {
  return text.replace(/[&<>"']/g, (char) => ({
    '&': '&amp;', '<': '&lt;', '>': '&gt;', '"': '&quot;', "'": '&#39;',
  })[char]);
}

function decodeHtml(html) {
  const textarea = document.createElement('textarea');
  textarea.innerHTML = html;
  return textarea.value;
}

import html

html.escape('Tom & Jerry <3')
# 'Tom &amp; Jerry &lt;3'

html.unescape('&lt;p&gt;&copy; 2026&lt;/p&gt;')
# '<p>© 2026</p>'

Which PHP function to use

htmlspecialchars()

encodes the five special characters, which is enough for safe output to HTML

htmlentities()

encodes everything that has a named entity, including accented letters, not needed on a UTF-8 page

htmlspecialchars_decode()

decodes only those five special characters back

html_entity_decode()

decodes all entities, both named and numeric

Since PHP 8.1, both encoding functions also encode the apostrophe by default and replace invalid UTF-8 characters with �. In older versions, pass the ENT_QUOTES | ENT_SUBSTITUTE flags yourself.

Common HTML entity mistakes