What do < and > stand for?

549
votes

I know that the entities &lt; and &gt; are used for < and >, but I am curious what these names stand for.

Does &lt; stand for something like "Left tag" or is it just a code?

10
htmlterminologyhtml-entitieshtml-escape-characters
w3schools.com/HTML/html_entities.asp - Stephen
Funny. I've been using these for ten years and hadn't realized what they stood for until now. - Azmisov
@LaurentS. "lt" = "less than" may only be easy to figure out if you took basic math instruction in English. - Matthew Leingang
what will be the code for \n - Som
means for > we use &gt; then what is for \n ? - Som

10 Answers

906
votes
  • &lt; stands for the less-than sign: <
  • &gt; stands for the greater-than sign: >
  • &le; stands for the less-than or equals sign: ≤
  • &ge; stands for the greater-than or equals sign: ≥
121
votes

&lt; Less than: <

&gt; Greater than: >

43
votes

They're used to explicitly define less than and greater than symbols. If one wanted to type out <html> and not have it be a tag in the HTML, one would use them. An alternate way is to wrap the <code> element around code to not run into that.

They can also be used to present mathematical operators.

<!ENTITY lt      CDATA "&#60;"   -- less-than sign, U+003C ISOnum -->
<!ENTITY gt      CDATA "&#62;"   -- greater-than sign, U+003E ISOnum -->

http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/sgml/entities.html

21
votes
&lt; ==  lesser-than == <
&gt; == greater-than == >
19
votes

Others have noted the correct answer, but have not clearly explained the all-important reason:

  • why do we need this?

What do < and > stand for?

  • &lt; stands for the < sign. Just remember: lt == less than
  • &gt; stands for the > Just remember: gt == greater than

Why can’t we simply use the < and > characters in HTML?

  • This is because the > and < characters are ‘reserved’ characters in HTML.
  • HTML is a mark up language: The < and > are used to denote the starting and ending of different elements: e.g. <h1> and not for the displaying of the greater than or less than symbols. But what if you wanted to actually display those symbols? You would simply use &lt; and &gt; and the browser will know exactly how to display it.

Reference: https://dev.w3.org/html5/html-author/charref

15
votes

&lt = less than <, &gt = greater than >

10
votes

&gt; and &lt; is a character entity reference for the > and < character in HTML.

It is not possible to use the less than (<) or greater than (>) signs in your file, because the browser will mix them with tags.

for these difficulties you can use entity names(&gt;) and entity numbers(&#60;).

6
votes

&lt; stands for lesser than (<) symbol and, the &gt; sign stands for greater than (>) symbol.

For more information on HTML Entities, visit this link:

https://www.w3schools.com/HTML/html_entities.asp

5
votes

In HTML, the less-than sign is used at the beginning of tags. if you use this bracket "<test1>" in content, your bracket content will be unvisible, html renderer is assuming it as a html tag, changing chars with it's ASCI numbers prevents the issue.

with html friendly name:

  &lt;test1&gt;

or with asci number:

 &#60;test1&#62;

or comple asci:

&#60;&#116;&#101;&#115;&#116;&#49;&#62;

result: <test1>

asci referance: https://www.w3schools.com/charsets/ref_html_ascii.asp

3
votes

in :

&lt=    this is    <=
=&gt    this is    =>