HTML/entity

About

An HTML entity is a combination of characters which will be displayed within an HTML browser as a single character. All HTML entities begin with "&" (ampersand) and end with ";" (semicolon). Many entities have mnemonic names (such as "&", which displays an ampersand); any possible character can be displayed as an entity by using the format "&#number;" where number is the output character's ASCII value in decimal.

Pages

• /list: list of some of the most useful entities

Reference

• Wikipedia
  • see also: Percent-encoding
• HTML 4.0 entities
• Named character references, in alphabetical order, including newer ones not supported by most browsers
• HTML Entity List: "Complete list of HTML entities with their numbers and names. Also included is a full list of ASCII characters that can be represented in HTML (i.e. printable characters)."

Questions

• Do search engines resolve html entities when indexing web pages? That is, if I spelled a word (e.g. "schmerglefrotz") entirely using html entities, would someone be able to find that page by typing "schmerglefrotz" (after the site had been spidered, of course)? (As a test, I will spell a completely different word using HTML entities, and try Googling it later: FRELGKLOTZ)
  • 2007-07-15 answer: Yes, it does find it (though it took several months at least before this page got indexed).
  • 2016-11-28 answer: Searching for the word in question no longer produces any results. Neither does searching for "schmerglefrotz".

Note

• 2017-11-11 MediaWiki 1.28.0 apparently no longer supports the "&#d;" style of entity; you now have to use named entities.
• 2020-05-23 This seems to have been fixed?