HTML Entity Encoder and Decoder

Escape and unescape HTML characters

HTML gives special meaning to a few characters, such as < and &. To show them as text you write entities like < and &. Entities also let you write symbols that are hard to type, from the copyright sign to arrows. This tool converts both ways.

Encode

Paste text and choose how much to encode:

• Only & < > " ' is the minimum for safe display of code or user text.
• Special plus non-ASCII also converts accented letters, currency signs and typographic punctuation, which helps with legacy systems and email.
• Everything but letters and digits converts all punctuation and symbols too.

Then choose the style. Named uses names such as é where they exist and falls back to numbers. Decimal writes é and Hex writes é. All three display the same character.

Decode

Switch to Decode and paste text with entities. Named entities from the common set (all of Latin-1 plus many typographic, arrow, maths and Greek names), and any decimal or hex references, are converted to real characters. Names that are not recognised are left as written so you can spot them.

Common entities

The grid at the bottom lists frequently used ones:   © ® ™ € £ … – — and more. Click a symbol to append it to your input.

When to use entities

1. Showing code in a page: escape every < and & in the snippet.
2. Email templates: some clients mishandle special characters, so numeric entities are safer.
3. CMS fields that strip or alter symbols.
4. Documentation where you need an exact, visible character.

When not to

For modern UTF-8 pages you can usually type the character itself. Entities are never a substitute for proper output escaping in your application code, which must be applied to all untrusted data.