How to use the HTML character entity finder
- Paste text into the Text box. It can be plain text or HTML.
- Keep Include markup characters (
& < > " ') ticked to list those as well, or untick it to see only non-ASCII characters. - Read the table: Char, Code point, Named, Decimal, Hex and Count. Download it as entities.csv if needed.
- Copy the Text with entities if you want an ASCII-only version of your text.
What it does and when to use it
Text pasted from a word processor or a website often contains characters that are hard to tell apart: curly “quotes” instead of straight ones, an en dash instead of a hyphen, a non-breaking space, a multiplication sign that looks like an x. They can break code, look wrong in a plain-text system, or turn into garbled symbols after a bad encoding conversion. The finder lists each one with its exact Unicode code point, so you know what you are dealing with, and gives you the entity to write it safely in HTML.
To convert a whole text one way or the other, use the HTML Encoder and HTML Decoder. For a browsable table of named entities, see the HTML Entities Reference. To look up a character’s Unicode name and details, use the Unicode Lookup.
How it works
The text is read one code point at a time, so an emoji counts as one character, not two halves. Every character above U+007F, plus the markup characters when that option is on, is counted. Characters are listed in the order they first appear. The named entity comes from the HTML entity table; the apostrophe is shown as '. Decimal and hex references are built from the code point, such as é and é for é. Everything runs in your browser.
Worked examples
The café sample contains 15 different special characters. The first rows are:
é | U+00E9 | é | é | é | 2
“ | U+201C | “ | “ | “ | 1
” | U+201D | ” | ” | ” | 1
— | U+2014 | — | — | — | 1The emoji at the end appears as 😀 | U+1F600 | — | 😀 | 😀 | 1, with no named entity. The encoded text starts Café “menu” — crème.
Markup characters. For Tom & Jerry's “café” with the option on, the list starts with & (&) and the apostrophe, ' | U+0027 | ' | ' | ' | 1. The encoded copy is Tom & Jerry's “café”.
Nothing special. “plain ascii” returns “No special or non-ASCII characters found.”
Limits and tips
- A non-breaking space (U+00A0) looks like a normal space but is listed here as
. It is a common reason why text will not wrap or why a search fails. - Characters made of several code points, such as some flags or family emoji, are listed as their separate parts.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need entities for characters such as é or €?
Which of the three forms should I use?
Why does the emoji have no named entity?
What does "Include markup characters" do?
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