Introduction
HTML is the language used to create web pages. It consists of a series of elements that are used to describe the content of a web page. These elements are contained within tags, which are enclosed in angle brackets.
HTML also supports a number of special characters, which are known as entities. Entities are used to represent characters that have a special meaning in HTML, such as the < character, which is used to create tags. There are two types of entities in HTML: numeric entities and named entities. Numeric entities are used to represent characters that have a numeric code point in the Unicode character set. Named entities are used to represent characters that have a name, such as the & character. Numeric Entities Numeric entities can be used to represent any character that has a numeric code point in the Unicode character set. The code point is written as a decimal number, and is prefixed by the &# symbol. For example, the code point for the & character is 38; therefore, this character can be represented using the entity & . Some characters have more than one code point. For example, the code point for the A with an acute accent ( Á ) is 193; however, this character can also be represented using the entity Á . In this case, theentity name is Aacute , and it is prefixed by an ampersand (&). Named Entities Named entities can be used to represent any character that has a name in the Unicode character set. The name is written as a string of characters, and is prefixed by an ampersand (&). For example, the entity for the & character is & . Some named entities also have a numeric code point associated with them; however, this is not always the case. For example, there is no numerical code point associated withthe entity © ; instead, this entity representsthe copyright symbol (©). Similarly, there isno numerical code point associated withthe entity ® ; instead, this entity representsthe registered trademark symbol (®).
