Character Reference Overview
A numeric character reference refers to a character by its Universal Character Set/Unicode code point, and uses the format
&#nnnn;
or
&#xhhhh;
where nnnn is the code point in decimal form, and hhhh is the code point in hexadecimal form. The x must be lowercase in XML documents. The nnnn or hhhh may be any number of digits and may include leading zeros. The hhhh may mix uppercase and lowercase, though uppercase is the usual style.
In contrast, a character entity reference refers to a character by the name of an entity which has the desired character as its replacement text. The entity must either be predefined (built into the markup language) or explicitly declared in a Document Type Definition (DTD). The format is the same as for any entity reference:
&name;
where name is the case-sensitive name of the entity. The semicolon is required.
Read more about this topic: List Of XML And HTML Character Entity References
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