Essential HTML Entities
![[ Image: Two Hip Characters ]](https://perishablepress.com/wp/wp-content/images/2007/misc-chunks/essential-characters.gif)
Virtually every article written here at Perishable Press requires at least one or two “special” HTML characters. Some of these characters — such as quotation marks, hyphens, and dashes — are very common, while others — such as the copyright symbol, bullet, and arrow — happen less frequently. The vast majority of special characters, however, like the latin Ä (i.e., capital letter “A” with a diaeresis), and the mathematical symbol ⊃ (i.e., superset), rarely see the light of day on most blogs, but they do exist.
As a blogger and content creator, I generally use the same set of special characters over and over again. So when I need to throw down an m-dash or right-angle quote or something, I want a guide that just gets me there. Most of the top search results include every special character known to humans. And it’s just overkill. So to boost productivity while writing content, I put together the following table of essential HTML Entities1.
Essential HTML Entities
| Character | Numeric Entity | Named Entity | Character Name |
|---|---|---|---|
  |
|
Non-Breaking Space | |
| « | « |
« |
Left Double-Angle Quote |
| » | » |
» |
Right Double-Angle Quote |
| ‹ | ‹ |
‹ |
Left Single-Angle Quote |
| › | › |
› |
Right Single-Angle Quote |
| “ | “ |
“ |
Left Double Quote |
| ” | ” |
” |
Right Double Quote |
| ‘ | ‘ |
‘ |
Left Single Quote |
| ’ | ’ |
’ |
Right Single Quote |
| " | " |
" |
Straight Quote |
| ' | ' |
' |
Apostrophe |
| ‚ | ‚ |
‚ |
Single Low Quote |
| „ | „ |
„ |
Double Low Quote |
| < | < |
< |
Left Angle Bracket |
| > | > |
> |
Right Angle Bracket |
| ← | ← |
← |
Left Arrow |
| → | → |
→ |
Right Arrow |
| ↑ | ↑ |
↑ |
Up Arrow |
| ↓ | ↓ |
↓ |
Down Arrow |
| – | – |
– |
En Dash |
| — | — |
— |
Em Dash |
| ‾ | ‾ |
‾ |
Overline |
| ¦ | ¦ |
¦ |
Broken Vertical Bar |
| ® | ® |
® |
Registered Symbol |
| © | © |
© |
Copyright Symbol |
| ™ | ™ |
™ |
Trademark Symbol |
| & | & |
& |
Ampersand |
| • | • |
• |
Bullet |
| · | · |
· |
Middle Dot |
| ¹ | ¹ |
¹ |
Superscript 1 |
| ² | ² |
² |
Superscript 2 |
| ³ | ³ |
³ |
Superscript 3 |
| ¢ | ¢ |
¢ |
Cent Symbol |
| † | † |
† |
Single Dagger |
| ‡ | ‡ |
‡ |
Double Dagger |
| ~ | ~ |
˜ |
Tilde |
Footnotes
1 Pro Tip: To ensure proper display of Unicode characters (i.e., UTF-8 encoded), add this meta declaration to the <head> of your web page(s):
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
