Web Design in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

Numeric Character References

A Numeric Character Reference (NCR) refers to the character by its Unicode code point (introduced earlier in this chapter). NCRs are always preceded by &# and end with a ; (semicolon). The numeric value may be provided in decimal or hexadecimal. Hexadecimal values are indicated by an x before the value.

For example, the copyright symbol (©), which occupies the 169th position in Unicode (U+00A9), may be represented by its hexadecimal NCR © or its decimal equivalent, ©. Decimal values are more common in practice. Note that the zeros at the beginning of the code point may be omitted in the numeric character reference.

Tip

Handy charts of every character in the Basic Multilingual Plane are maintained as a labor of love by Jens Brueckmann at his site J-A-B.net. The Unicode code point and decimal/hexadecimal NCR is provided for every character. It is available at www.j-a-b.net/web/char/char-unicode-bmp.