HTML is a quite versatile language. This means that pretty much whatever
you want to express is expressable by using HTML. Some times, however, the regular
character sets don't support certain letters. This is where the special characters
come in.
History
As far as I have been able to trace, special characters have been around
since HTML 1.0 - all the way, in other words. This was necesary too, as
the greater than and less then (> and <) symbols were used both in the
HTML code itself, and by people writing about it. To solve this problem, entities
were invented.
Usage
To use one of these entities, you begin with an ampersand (&), then
the entity, and finally the semicolon (;) sign. That way, the browser
knows to interpret the sign you are using as something else than regular text,
namely HTML entities.
If you want to write the actual ampersand sign, you would wite "&"
in your code. When the web browser reads this, it shows an "&"
sign, and everybody is happy.
As you can see from the listings, often the entity shows up as &something;
instead of what you want it to show up as. Sadly, this is because not all
browsers support all the entities, because you are missing a font, etc.
You might try the ASCII code (looks like &291;) instead, but if it then
doesn't show up, this makes your code even less readable. :)
Source
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/sgml/entities.html
For a complete list of HTML special characters, check out the HTML symbol reference. For info on how to use them on E2, you might want to look at E2 FAQ: Using Special HTML Characters
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