Characters not found in the normal alphanumeric character set, such as © or &, must be specified in HTML using character entities. Character entities can be defined by name (&name;) or by numeric value (&#nnn;). The browser interprets the string to display the proper character. Named entities are preferable because numeric values may be interpreted differently on different platforms.
Unless otherwise noted, the character entities are part of the HTML 2.0 and later standards and will work with nearly all available browsers. A"4.01" in the character's description indicates that character entity is part of the HTML 4.0 Specification and is supported only by Internet Explorer and Navigator versions 4.0 and higher. An "N" in the description indicates that the character is a nonstandard entity.