HTML entities
Escaped so it shows, or decoded so you can read it.
Examples temporarily replace the input and settings. You can restore your previous work.
0 characters
Output
Paste or type above to see the result here.
Your files stay on your device
This tool runs entirely in your browser. What you paste is processed on your device and is never sent to a server, so it is safe to use with tokens, keys and unpublished text.
Example
Worked example — HTML entities
Paste the text. Use the following inputs and settings. Keep the other settings at the page defaults.
- In the XML below, replace ‹ and › with < and >. The full-width ＆ represents &.
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Input | A & B |
| Output 1 | A ＆amp; B |
The ampersand is encoded as the named entity amp, with a leading ampersand and trailing semicolon. The output has 9 characters.
How it works
- Paste the text.
- Escaping handles the five that have to be escaped: & < > " and '.
- Turn on “everything outside ASCII” if the page’s encoding is not to be trusted.
- Switch direction to decode entities back into characters.
Frequently asked questions
- Which characters actually have to be escaped?
- Five: & < > " and '. Everything else is optional in a UTF-8 document, and escaping more than you need makes the source harder to read and the file larger.
- When would I escape the rest anyway?
- When the file’s encoding is out of your hands — an email template, a CMS field, something going through a system that may mangle UTF-8. Then é survives where é might not.
- Does decoding understand numeric entities?
- Yes: é and é both come back as é, alongside the named ones.
- Why is ' escaped as ' rather than '?
- Because ' is not in HTML 4 and old parsers do not know it, while ' works everywhere. It is the safer of the two.
- Is anything sent to a server?
- No. It runs in your browser, so what you paste stays on your computer.
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