Text to Unicode

Parse and convert text to unicode and vice-versa

Enable JavaScript to use the interactive tool. The guide below explains how it works.

Text to Unicode

What it does

This tool converts text into decimal HTML character references (such as H for "H") and converts those references back into text. It gives you the numeric code behind every character, in a form that can be pasted directly into HTML.

Why someone uses it

• Embedding special characters in HTML or email templates where the source file must stay plain ASCII.
• Finding out the numeric code of an unfamiliar or look-alike character.
• Decoding a string of &#...; references found in scraped or legacy content.
• Teaching how characters map to numbers.

Step-by-step instructions

1. Text to Unicode: type or paste text in the first card; the entity string appears below. Copy it with the button.
2. Unicode to text: paste a string of decimal references such as Hi into the second card to see the readable text.
3. Both cards work independently, so you can test a round trip.

Examples

• Hi → Hi
• A → A
• Café → Café
• © → ©

Understanding the results

Each number is the character's code point in the Unicode table, written in decimal between &# and ;. Codes 0–127 match ASCII, so English letters give small numbers (A is 65, a is 97). Higher numbers cover accented letters, symbols and other scripts. Note that the converter works on JavaScript's 16-bit units, so characters outside the Basic Multilingual Plane, including most emoji, are output as two separate surrogate-pair references rather than one. Browsers may not display such a pair correctly if you paste it into HTML on its own; for emoji, the single-code-point form (for example 🙂) is safer.

FAQs

• Is this the same as H escapes? No. That is a JavaScript/JSON notation using hexadecimal. This tool produces decimal HTML references.
• Does it encode hex references like H? It outputs decimal only, and decodes decimal only.
• Is this encryption? No. It is a reversible representation that anyone can decode.
• Is my text uploaded? No, conversion runs entirely in your browser.

Common mistakes

• Forgetting the closing semicolon when writing references by hand; the decoder expects &#number;.
• Pasting hex references (A) and seeing them left unchanged.
• Using the output as a security measure. Entity-encoding text does not hide it and is not a substitute for escaping user input.

Use cases

• Preparing HTML snippets that must survive ASCII-only systems.
• Investigating look-alike (homoglyph) characters in suspicious text.
• Documenting character codes for a style guide.
• Debugging encoding problems in legacy web pages.

Related tools

• HTML Entities: Escape and unescape named entities such as &.
• Text to Binary: See the bit patterns behind the same characters.
• URL Encoder: Percent-encode text for safe use in URLs.