Paste your text below to convert special characters to HTML entities:
Privacy Guaranteed: Your text is processed locally in your browser. Nothing is ever stored or sent to any server.
How to Use Our Tool: A Simple Guide
Our HTML entity encoder is designed for speed and simplicity. Follow these easy steps to get your encoded text:
- Enter Your Text: Type or paste any string of text into the “Enter text to encode” input area. This can include plain text, code snippets, or any content with special characters.
- Watch the Magic Happen: The tool automatically encodes your text in real-time. As you type, the “Encoded Result” box below will instantly update with the correctly encoded HTML entities.
- Copy the Result: Once you’re satisfied, click the “Copy Result” button. The encoded text will be copied to your clipboard, ready to be pasted into your HTML, CMS, or application.
- Clear and Start Over: To encode a new piece of text, simply click the “Clear Text” button. This will reset both the input and output fields.
What are HTML Entities?
HTML entities are special codes used to represent characters that have special meaning in HTML or characters that don’t appear on standard keyboards. They begin with an ampersand (&) and end with a semicolon (;).
Common HTML Entities
Why Use HTML Entity Encoding?
Security
Prevent cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks by encoding user-generated content. This neutralizes malicious scripts that use
Safely Encoded Output:
<script>alert('XSS Attack!');</script>When this encoded string is placed in your HTML, the browser will display it as plain text instead of executing the script, neutralizing the threat.
Frequently Asked Questions
HTML entities are used to display characters that have special meaning in HTML code (like <, >, &) or characters not on a standard keyboard. They ensure characters display as text rather than being interpreted as code by the browser.
Named entities use a descriptive name (e.g., ©), making them easy to remember. Numeric entities use a number (e.g., ©) and are more universally supported for all characters in the Unicode standard.
If your page uses , you only *must* encode the five reserved HTML characters: <, >, &, ", and '. Encoding other symbols is a good practice for clarity and to avoid potential display issues.
HTML encoding (e.g., <) is for displaying special characters inside HTML content. URL encoding (e.g., %20 for a space) is for safely including special characters within a web address (URL). They are not interchangeable.
No, it's best practice to store raw, unencoded data in your database. This makes the data easier to search, index, and manage. You should only apply HTML encoding at the final step, when you are about to render the data for display on a web page.
You can, but you shouldn't. Encoding the entire document will convert all the < and > characters of your HTML tags, which will prevent the browser from rendering the page correctly. You should only encode the text content that goes *inside* the HTML tags.
The performance impact is negligible and not something to worry about. Browsers are highly optimized to parse entities very quickly. Security and content correctness are far more important concerns than the minimal processing overhead.
No, all processing happens locally in your browser using JavaScript. Your text is never sent to our servers, ensuring complete privacy and security. You can even use this tool offline after the page has loaded.
To decode HTML entities (e.g., converting < back to <), you need an HTML Entity Decoder. We recommend using a dedicated decoding tool for this purpose.
UTF-8 is a universal character encoding standard used for the web. It can represent almost any character from any language. Declaring in your HTML ensures that browsers correctly interpret special characters and symbols, working alongside HTML entities for maximum compatibility.