An end to entity envy

Using entity codes in your web copy is the right way to ensure that what you say comes out the way you intended. It's also good practice if you want your code to validate.

Blogs are particularly prone to mishaps with missing entity codes. &s frequently get mangled and text cut and pasted from a word document will often have apostrophe and quote marks that render as gibberish.

These usual suspects aside it's almost impossible to remember all the entity codes you need to ensure that your text renders as intended. And what about more exotic elements like this arrow ← or this asterisk ∗ or a trade mark ™. Most of the look-up options I've seen to date inevitably involve trawling through acres of entities that you don't need at that very moment.

Well help is at hand at LeftLogic. This site quickly returns the appropriate code for any entity you can think of. It also comes as a Firefox plug-in and as a handy desktop widget for anyone using a mac.