HTML 13: Character entities
You're right.
Because browsers use the < and > to begin and end tags, using them in the content of your HTML can cause problems.
But, HTML gives you an easy way to specify these and other special characters using a simple abbreviation called a character entity.
Here's how it works: for any character that is considered "special" or that you'd like to use in your Web page, but that may not be a typable character in Notepad (like a copyright symbol ©), you just look up the abbreviation and then type it into your HTML.
For example, the > character's abbreviation is > and the < character's is < .
So, say you wanted to type "The <html> element rocks." in your page. Using the character entities, you'd type this instead:
The <html> element rocks.
Another important special character you should know about is the & character. If you'd like to have an & ("ampersand") in your HTML content, use the character & instead of the & character itself.
So what about the copyright symbol? And all those other symbols and foreign characters? You can look up common ones here:
http://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_entities.asp
Exercise: Crack the Location
Dr Evel, in his quest for world domination, has put up a private Web page to be used by his evil henchmen.
You've just received a snippet of intercepted HTML that may contain a clue to his whereabouts. Given your expert knowledge of HTML, you've been asked to crack the code and discover his location.
Here's a bit of the text from his home page:
- Type in the HTML and see what your browser displays.
- Save the file as location.html in your root folder.
- Turn in your root folder to
My Documents \ K201 \ PERIOD3/4 \ HTML 13
Back to Tony
We'll learn all about getting a Web site onto the Web in the next few lessons.
First, let's review the main concepts from HTML 80 through HTML 13
Source: "Head First HTML: with CSS & XHTML" by Elisabeth Freeman and Eric Freeman
