THE COMPLETE LIST OF HTML ESCAPE CODES

For when the letters on your keyboard just aren't enough!

If there's anything on this page that you don't understand, then just use the new form to ask me about it.

So what's all this about escape codes? Well, the first point to make is that this section is definitely not for beginners: it is a reference for any HTML authors who want to use escape codes. An escape code is a way of writing a character without using that character. I'll explain why you should want to do that in a moment. The syntax (or structure) of an HTML escape code is:

&#number;

The word "number" is replaced by different numbers to make different escape codes.

eg. &#1;

This is the first escape code, and it produces the character , a small box.
There are three main reasons that you would want to use escape codes in HTML:

Using special characters, like ™, that haven't got a key on the keyboard that you can just press.
Writing foreign words or phrases. Escape codes include all letters in European languages (I think). As an example, I'll give you a flavour of my French (note the accents):
```
J'ai regardé la télévision.
```
By the way, that means "I watched the television".
Illustrating HTML tags. This use is also explained in the "My Comments" section of the table. There must be about 50 examples of this use in parts 1 and 2 of main guide to HTML. Let's say you want to write a Web page that proclaims, "Underlining text in HTML is easy: you just have to put <U> before the text you want to underline, and </U> at the end of the text you want to underline". Well how do you do that without the tags disappearing and the text actually becoming underlined? If you haven't guessed, the answer is "Use escape codes!". If you just type in
```
Put <U> before the text, and </U> after the text.
```
then it will come out as
```
Put  before the text, and  after the text.
```
To get the sentence to come out as you want it, you must use escape codes:
```
Put &#60;U&#62; before the text, and &#60;/U&#62; after the text.
```

Before I present you with the table, I'll just tell you that some of the more commonly used escape codes have short-cuts. For example, you can use < to get the < sign, but you can also refer to it by its name. It is called the "Less Than" sign, so an alternative escape code for it is:

&lt;

This is usually easier to remember than <. Note, when you refer to a character by its name, there is no # sign in the escape code.
I have put the short-cuts for the most popular escape codes in bold, as the last line in my comment next to the character, so look out for them.
OK, without further ado, here's the table.

Number	Character	My comments
1-8		This means that the numbers 1 through 8 produce the symbol .
9-13		The symbol produced here is not a space, and the code does work. The symbol produced is the null symbol. It is pure nothingness, and has no real use on a Web page.
14-31		The box is back in town.
32		Another number that makes the null symbol.
33	!	From here down to 126 are just punctuation marks and letters, which aren't very interesting, with two exceptions...
34	"	Short-cut: "
35	#
36	$
37	%
38	&	Short-cut: &
39	'
40	(
41	)
42	*
43	+
44	,
45	-
46	.
47	/
48	0
49	1
50	2
51	3
52	4
53	5
54	6
55	7
56	8
57	9
58	:
59	;
60	<	OK, here is exception No.1 (Americans, read "#1" for "No.1") Why is this a useful code? Because the < character is what we use to make tags! This code allows us to put tags like <H1> onto the page without the tag being read by the browser. Clever, eh? For example, <B>This is not in bold!</B> Short-cut: <
61	=
62	>	This is the other half of <, which we saw just a minute ago. Short-cut: >
63	?	It's simple stuff again from here down to 126.
64	@
65	A
66	B
67	C
68	D
69	E
70	F
71	G
72	H
73	I
74	J
75	K
76	L
77	M
78	N
79	O
80	P
81	Q
82	R
83	S
84	T
85	U
86	V
87	W
88	X
89	Y
90	Z
91	[
92	\
93	]
94	^
95	_
96	`
97	a
98	b
99	c
100	d
101	e
102	f
103	g
104	h
105	i
106	j
107	k
108	l
109	m
110	n
111	o
112	p
113	q
114	r
115	s
116	t
117	u
118	v
119	w
120	x
121	y
122	z
123	{
124	\|
125	}
126	~
127		That box is back...again!
128-129	N/A	I've marked these with N/A (meaning Not Applicable) because these codes do not produce normal characters; they do not produce null characters; they do not produce spaces. They just do not work. If you typed in in the source of a Web page, then is exactly what would appear on the screen, just like that! Note: Microsoft Internet Explorer usually replaces codes that don't work with our old favourite, the box, .
130	‚
131	ƒ	I think this is the f that is used in maths to denote a function. There's quite a few interesting symbols that you'll see come up. It's not my job to explain what they all mean (I don't know all of them, anyway), so I won't explain them.
132	„
133	…
134	†
135	‡
136	ˆ
137	‰
138	Š
139	‹
140	Œ
141	N/A	Here's a group of another four codes that can't be bothered to produce a character.
145	‘	Here we return to some useful codes.
146	’
147	“
148	”
149	•
150	–
151	—
152	˜
153	™	I'll make a comment next to this one just to draw attention to it because I expect a lot of people want to know the code for it.
154	š
155	›
156	œ
157	N/A	Here's another two codes that are non-workers.
159	Ÿ
160		This is an interesting one. It's not some kind of weird technical symbol. It is, in fact, a space. "A space?!", I hear you cry, "What use is that?!". Well, it's actually very useful: Unless you want to learn some unusual tags, there is no way to use more than one space in text. This code allows you to do that. For example, if you want to put three spaces between two words (I don't know why you'd want to do that, but anyway...) you could type hello   everybody, and it would come out as hello everybody. Short-cut:
161	¡
162	¢
163	£
164	¤
165	¥
166	¦
167	§	I'm adding a comment to this symbol because I think it's curly design looks kinda cool.
168	¨
169	©	This copyright sign is very popular, and obviously it's useful as well. Short-cut: ©
170	ª
171	«
172	¬
173
174	®	I should also point out this one because a lot of people like to use it. Short-cut: ®
175	¯
176	°
177	±
178	²
179	³
180	´
181	µ
182	¶
183	·
184	¸
185	¹
186	º
187	»
188	¼	Here's some fractions for you.
189	½
190	¾
191	¿	Care for a whole bunch of foreign characters? You got it...
192	À
193	Á
194	Â
195	Ã
196	Ä
197	Å
198	Æ
199	Ç
200	È
201	É
202	Ê
203	Ë
204	Ì
205	Í
206	Î
207	Ï
208	Ð
209	Ñ
210	Ò
211	Ó
212	Ô
213	Õ
214	Ö
215	×
216	Ø
217	Ù
218	Ú
219	Û
220	Ü
221	Ý
222	Þ
223	ß
224	à
225	á
226	â
227	ã
228	ä
229	å
230	æ
231	ç
232	è
233	é
234	ê
235	ë
236	ì
237	í
238	î
239	ï
240	ð
241	ñ
242	ò
243	ó
244	ô
245	õ
246	ö
247	÷	This doesn't look much like a foreign character to me. I think it belongs in the maths section, but I don't make the rules up.
248	ø
249	ù
250	ú
251	û
252	ü
253	ý
254	þ
255	ÿ
256-337	Ā	Why does the question mark get so many codes? I don't know, but I'll tell you one thing: it's gonna get more...
338	Œ	We come across an island, two symbols long, in a sea of question marks. The island is made up of symbols that already have codes. I think that whoever invented the numbering system must have been high at the time.
339	œ	We reach the other side of the island...
340-351	Ŕ	...and the sea of mystery begins again.
352	Š	Another brief break from the question marks.
353	š
354-375	Ţ	The questions! So many unanswered questions! I can't take it any longer! Ahhh!
376	Ÿ	It's completely crazy! A Ÿ stuck out in the middle of nowhere!
377-401	Ź	Another 25 codes you can use to get a question mark. Now there's something that really is useless!
402	ƒ	Yep, it's another symbol that's repeated randomly for no obvious reason. This time it's the f that we met before using the code .
403-???	Ɠ	And I think you'll find that brings us to a close. From here on we just get question marks. Perhaps the symbols are supposed to be truly symbolic, signifying the infinite space and time that is still a deep, dark mystery of life. Then again, perhaps it's just an untidy system. You decide.

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