HTML Entity Encoder / Decoder

What are HTML entities?

HTML entities are special codes that represent characters which would otherwise be interpreted as markup or cannot be typed easily. They come in named form (& for &) and numeric form (& or &). The browser displays the actual character while the source stays valid. This tool encodes text into entities and decodes entities back to characters.

Why you need to encode

A few characters have structural meaning in HTML: < and > delimit tags, & begins an entity, and quotes delimit attributes. If you want to display these literally, or include a character your keyboard cannot produce, you must encode it so the browser shows it as text rather than treating it as code.

Named vs. numeric entities

& (named) and & (numeric) render the same character. Named entities are more readable but only exist for a defined set of characters; numeric entities work for any Unicode code point, which is why this tool can encode emoji and non-Latin characters that have no name. Encode-essential mode touches only the markup-sensitive characters, while encode-all converts everything non-ASCII.

A note on security

Encoding output before inserting it into a page is a key defence against cross-site scripting (XSS), because it stops user input from being parsed as HTML. However, encoding alone is not a complete security strategy: context matters (HTML, attributes, and JavaScript each need different handling), so treat this tool as one part of safe output handling, not a guarantee.