Encode and decode HTML special characters and entities instantly.
HTML entities are used to represent special characters, symbols, and Unicode characters in HTML documents. The HTML Entities tool converts between regular text and HTML-encoded format instantly. HTML entities are necessary because certain characters have special meaning in HTML. For example, the less-than symbol (<) starts an HTML tag, so it must be encoded as < to display as a literal character. Ampersands (&) start entity references, so they must be encoded as &. Quotation marks can cause issues in HTML attributes. Our HTML Entities tool handles all special characters: common symbols (&, <, >, ", ', etc.), mathematical symbols (±, ×, ÷, etc.), currency symbols (€, £, ¥, etc.), arrow symbols (→, ←, ↑, ↓, etc.), and Unicode characters from any language. Use cases include: preparing text for HTML documents, ensuring special characters display correctly on web pages, preventing cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities, working with HTML email templates, and converting user input for safe storage and display. The tool works in both directions: encode regular text to HTML entities for safe inclusion in HTML, or decode HTML entities back to readable text. Real-time preview shows both formats side-by-side.
Special characters like <, >, &, and quotation marks have meaning in HTML. Encoding prevents them from being interpreted as HTML code.
An HTML entity is a text representation of a special character, starting with & and ending with ;, like < for the less-than symbol.
No, only characters that have special meaning in HTML or characters not in your document's character set.
Yes, both work in HTML. Named entities like are more readable; numeric entities like   work everywhere.