Character entities:
In HTML, certain characters have special meanings. For instance, the opening bracket ‘<’ which normally means ‘less than’ has a different meaning in HTML. If you apply it in the HTML page it won’t display the bracket in the browser page. Therefore, there are special entities for displaying such characters.

A character entity is made up of three components:

-          An ampersand (&)

-          The entity’s name/a # and entity number

-          At the last there should be a semicolon.

Now to display a less than sign in the HTM document we would use: &lt; or &#60.

As said before, you can either use a number or a name. Nevertheless they both have their advantages plus disadvantages. The advantage of using a number is that it is supported by nearly every browser but the disadvantage is that numbers aren’t easy to remember. On the other hand, using names is advisable because they are easy to remember but then they are not supported by every browser.

Also, you should remember that these entities are case sensitive.


NBSP – Non-breaking Space:

Non-breaking space is the most common character entity in HTML. NBSP is used for adding spaces in your text. Normally, HTML reduces one space from the number of spaces you added in your text.

&nbsp; is the entity used for adding spaces in your text.

A list of all the important character entities is given below:

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