How to Use Character Entities in HTML, CSS and JavaScript

HTML character entities are crucial for displaying special symbols and characters not readily available on standard keyboards. These include international characters, mathematical symbols, shapes, and arrows. For instance: ♠ ♣ ♥ ♦ © ®. While UTF-8 encoding generally handles these directly, entities offer solutions when UTF-8 isn’t used, character conflicts arise, or keyboard input is difficult.

Entities in HTML: These directly map to UTF-8 characters. The symbol for Pi (π) can be represented as π or its UTF-8 equivalent. You can find entity codes and UTF-8 index numbers using an HTML Character Entity Reference.

Entities in CSS: Increasingly used with webfont icons and pseudo-elements, CSS requires the UTF-8 number converted to hexadecimal. For Pi (03C0), you’d use

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