HTML Entity Encoder/Decoder - Encode Special Characters

📖 How It Works

What are HTML Entities?

HTML entities are special codes used to display reserved characters in HTML. For example, the less-than sign (<) must be written as < to prevent browsers from interpreting it as an HTML tag.

Common HTML Entities

< → < (less than)
> → > (greater than)
& → & (ampersand)
" → " (double quote)
' → ' (single quote/apostrophe)
  → non-breaking space
© → © (copyright)
® → ® (registered trademark)

🔐 Security Tip: Always encode user input before displaying it in HTML to prevent XSS (Cross-Site Scripting) attacks. This tool helps you do exactly that!

🎯 Common Use Cases

Displaying Code: Show HTML/XML code examples on web pages
Security: Sanitize user input to prevent XSS attacks
Email Templates: Encode special characters for HTML emails
CMS Content: Prepare content for content management systems
Data Export: Encode data for XML/HTML export

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

Encode when displaying user-generated content, showing code examples, or inserting dynamic text into HTML attributes. This prevents browsers from misinterpreting special characters as HTML markup.

Named entities use descriptive names (like &) while numeric entities use character codes (like &). Both represent the same character. Named entities are more readable but not all characters have named versions.