Character references and HTML entities

Each character can be referenced as a coded number (from ASCII, Unicode...) visualized through a decimal or hexadecimal number. To help utilize some of the most commonly used symbols and punctuations HTML introduced character entities which basically are replacements for the original code.

There is no need to use references for western based alphabet letters or numbers as the browsers recognize them, but if there is a need for using them to express extended alphabet letters such as eastern European letters, accents, symbols and punctuations and other.

Especially important is to use them when applying quotes and great / less symbols. The reason for that is the fact that those characters have other programming meaning besides just being used as punctuation symbols.

Most often used character references (except the language related ones) are listed below and separated by the functionality. It is important to understand that some of them might not be supported by certain browsers.