files/en-us/glossary/character_reference/index.md
An {{glossary("HTML")}} character reference is an {{glossary("escape character", "escape sequence")}} of {{glossary("character", "characters")}} that is used to represent another character in the rendered web page.
Character references are used as replacements for characters that are reserved in HTML, such as the less-than (<) and greater-than (>) symbols used by the HTML parser to identify element {{Glossary('tag','tags')}}, or " or ' within attributes, which may be enclosed by those characters.
They can also be used for invisible characters that would otherwise be impossible to type, including non-breaking spaces, control characters like left-to-right and right-to-left marks, and for characters that are hard to type on a standard keyboard.
There are three types of character references:
Named character references
&) and a semicolon (;) to refer to the corresponding character.
For example, < is used for the less-than (<) symbol, and © for the copyright symbol (©).
The string used for the reference is often a {{glossary("Camel case","camel-cased")}} initialization or contraction of the character name.Decimal numeric character references
&#, followed by one or more ASCII digits representing the base-ten integer that corresponds to the character's {{glossary("Unicode")}} {{glossary("code point")}}, and ending with ;.
For example, the decimal character reference for < is <, because the Unicode code point for the symbol is U+0003C, and 3C hexadecimal is 60 in decimal.Hexadecimal numeric character references
&#x or &#X, followed by one or more ASCII hex digits, representing the hexadecimal integer that corresponds to the character's Unicode code point, and ending with ;.
For example, the hexadecimal character reference for < is < or <, because the Unicode code point for the symbol is U+0003C.A very small subset of useful named character references along with their unicode code points are listed below.
| Character | Named reference | Unicode code-point |
|---|---|---|
| & | & | U+00026 |
| < | < | U+0003C |
| > | > | U+0003E |
| " | " | U+00022 |
| ' | ' | U+00027 |
| U+000A0 | |
| – | – | U+02013 |
| — | — | U+02014 |
| © | © | U+000A9 |
| ® | ® | U+000AE |
| ™ | ™ | U+02122 |
| ≈ | ≈ | U+02248 |
| ≠ | ≠ | U+02260 |
| £ | £ | U+000A3 |
| € | € | U+020AC |
| ° | ° | U+000B0 |
The full list of HTML named character references can found in the HTML specification here.