What are HTML character entities?
An HTML entity is a piece of text ("string") that begins with an ampersand ( & ) and ends with a semicolon ( ; ). Entities are frequently used to display reserved characters (which would otherwise be interpreted as HTML code), and invisible characters (like non-breaking spaces).
What is a special character entity?
HTML character references are short bits of HTML, commonly referred to as character entities or entity codes, that are used to display characters that have special meaning in HTML as well as characters that don't appear on your keyboard. Characters with special meaning in HTML are called reserved characters.