In HTML, entities are special characters used to represent certain symbols or characters that cannot be directly typed into the source code. A special code represents entities called an entity reference, which consists of an ampersand (&) followed by a name or number, and ends with a semicolon (;).

For example, the < entity reference represents the less-than symbol (<) and is used to display the symbol in HTML without actually using the symbol in the source code.

Here are some examples of how to use these entity references:

• The >: >
• The &: &
• The ": "
• The ': '
• The  : (space).

In addition to the common entity references, several other entity references are available in HTML that can be used to represent a wide range of characters and symbols. For example, you can use the &#8217; entity reference to represent the right single quotation mark (’) character or the &#x2605; entity reference to represent the star symbol (★).