Convert raw HTML markup characters like angle brackets and ampersands into safe entity equivalents for embedding in web pages. Prevents browser parsing errors when injecting dynamic content into HTML templates.
✍️
Blog and CMS content editing
Escape HTML entities in article content, blog posts, and CMS rich-text fields before saving to a database. Avoids broken layouts caused by unescaped less-than signs or curly quotes in post bodies.
📧
Email template development
Encode special characters and currency symbols in HTML email templates for clients like Outlook that handle Unicode inconsistently. Use named entities like € and © for maximum compatibility.
🔒
Sanitising user input display
Encode user-submitted text before rendering it in HTML to prevent cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities. The HTML-only mode encodes just the five critical characters needed for safe display without over-encoding.
🌍
Internationalisation and Unicode
Encode accented characters and international symbols as numeric HTML entities for environments where UTF-8 encoding is not guaranteed. Decode incoming entity strings to verify the correct characters are being stored.
🔣
Inserting symbols and typography
Look up and copy HTML entities for em dashes, copyright symbols, arrows, and typographic quotes from the reference table. Click any entity to copy it instantly for use in HTML, CSS content properties, or Markdown.
html entity encoderhtml entitiesencode htmldecode html entitieshtml escapehtml special charactershtml entity decoderampersand encodexss preventionhtml entity reference
Frequently asked questions
How do I encode special characters like & and < for HTML?
Paste text containing characters such as &, <, >, (c), or (euro) and the tool converts them to their HTML entity equivalents like & and < instantly. Switch direction to decode entities back into readable text.
Does this tool include a reference table of common HTML entities?
Is encoding HTML entities useful for preventing XSS attacks?
Encoding characters like < and > into entities is one part of preventing cross-site scripting, since it stops raw markup from being interpreted as HTML tags. It should be paired with proper server-side sanitization for real security.
Can I decode HTML entities back into plain text?
Yes. Paste text containing entities such as &amp; or &#169; and the tool decodes them back to their plain character equivalents in the opposite direction.