HTML & CSS: The Complete Reference, Fifth Edition, 5th Edition

APPENDIX A Character Entities

Keyboard characters such as < and > have special meanings to (X)HTML because they are part of HTML tags and must be encoded. Other characters, such as certain foreign language accent characters and special symbols, can be difficult to specify, depending on the keyboard being used. To address escaping of special-purpose characters and inserting a wide range of characters and symbols, character entities should be employed.

The format of character entities is in general

&code;

where code may be a

• A decimal form like Ë

• A hex form like Ë or stripped of leading zeros, simply &xCB;

• A named value if available, such as Ë

NOTE When using a hex form, either a lowercase or uppercase x may be used as well ...