What do < and > stand for?

Question

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

Does < stand for something like "Left tag" or is it just a code?

Funny. I've been using these for ten years and hadn't realized what they stood for until now. — Azmisov, Jul 02 '14 at 05:09
@LaurentS. "lt" = "less than" may only be easy to figure out if you took basic math instruction in English. — Matthew Leingang, Jul 20 '15 at 17:57
@Som I cannot think of a reason to have a code for `\n`. HTML should treat this correctly without any confusion. Note that there are specific features of CSS relating to how whitespace is handled (I do not know them off the top of my head, sorry.) — pbristow, Oct 20 '21 at 17:42

score 1014 · Accepted Answer · edited Jul 17 '20 at 02:15

1014

< stands for the less-than sign: <
> stands for the greater-than sign: >
≤ stands for the less-than or equals sign: ≤
≥ stands for the greater-than or equals sign: ≥

edited Jul 17 '20 at 02:15

Io-oI

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answered Feb 21 '11 at 17:10

biscuitstack

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@RonaldinhoLearnCoding `>=` will display `>=`, but if you prefer to use the literal characters, greater or equal (≥) is `≥`, and less than or equal (≤) is `≤`. – gkubed Jan 07 '16 at 13:49
Hah. Always thought "Left Tag" and "Right Tag", but maybe RT was taken by Return, so it's using letter G from right instead of R... – jeffkee Oct 30 '19 at 23:34
What are these called? – Demodave Oct 15 '20 at 19:29
@Demodave In ordinary English grammar these are "angle brackets". In HTML these are "HTML Entities" or "Reserved Characters": https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Entity – pbristow Oct 20 '21 at 17:45

score 126 · Answer 2 · edited Oct 09 '16 at 18:14

126

< Less than: <

> Greater than: >

edited Oct 09 '16 at 18:14

Thomas Vos

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answered Feb 21 '11 at 17:11

James Goodwin

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I thought `lt` stands for `left tag`. But `gt` was breaking my assumption. – abatishchev Feb 25 '13 at 20:20
I can replace < with < Similarly, what can I use for new line character? – Anuj Balan May 09 '13 at 11:56
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@AnujBalan Perhaps you want the `
` tag? You don't need to escape a newline character in HTML. Most programming languages (notably JavaScript) use `\n` to escape newlines in strings. But if you want a paragraph character use `¶` - also check out http://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_entities.asp – David Jun 10 '13 at 11:18

score 48 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 21 '11 at 17:10

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

BenKoshy · Answer 4 · 2022-06-15T00:14:32.080

What do < and > stand for?

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

Why do we need it?

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 < and > and the browser will know exactly how to display it.

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

score 22 · Answer 5 · answered Feb 21 '11 at 17:10

22

&lt; ==  lesser-than == <
&gt; == greater-than == >

answered Feb 21 '11 at 17:10

Mārtiņš Briedis

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score 15 · Answer 6 · answered Feb 21 '11 at 17:12

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

answered Feb 21 '11 at 17:12

Greg Treleaven

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score 10 · Answer 7 · answered Mar 05 '13 at 12:22

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> and < 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(>) and entity numbers(<).

answered Mar 05 '13 at 12:22

Kathir

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What is the character entity reference for 'new line character' ? – Anuj Balan May 09 '13 at 11:55
Check this link and this may help you in finding the new line character entity http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3488198/why-is-br-an-html-element-rather-than-an-html-entity – Kathir May 09 '13 at 13:51
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Its Got it from a site. – Anuj Balan May 10 '13 at 07:03

score 6 · Answer 8 · edited Oct 24 '19 at 10:31

6

< stands for lesser than (<) symbol and, the > sign stands for greater than (>) symbol.

For more information on HTML Entities, visit this link:

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

edited Oct 24 '19 at 10:31

Geert Bellekens

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answered Oct 12 '18 at 06:57

tejasgupta

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This does not add anything new above the many answers written years ago on this seven year old question... In the future, to avoid such duplication, please have a glance at existing answers before writing a new one. – Jean-François Corbett Oct 12 '18 at 07:27
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Ok. I''l do as you say. – tejasgupta Dec 17 '18 at 13:44

zamoldar · Answer 9 · 2020-04-11T23:58:07.637

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

shilovk · Answer 10 · 2015-04-17T12:30:58.547

3

in rails:

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

edited Apr 17 '15 at 12:30

answered Sep 29 '14 at 10:27

shilovk

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What do < and > stand for?

10 Answers10

What do < and > stand for?

Why do we need it?

Linked

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