HTML uses certain characters to do certain things. You already know the "<" and ">" characters identify HTML commands. Therefore, you can not use those characters for any other purpose. What happens when you need to show a < or > on the screen? How do you do that?
This is done using even more special characters--an ampersand (&) and a semi-colon (;). By placing certain codes between an ampersand and a semicolon, specific characters appear. If you type "<", HTML knows that is the "less than" character, and a < will be displayed. Likewise, ">" means the "greater than" character, which HTML displays as >.
Special characters can be inserted such as &, §, ©, °, ·, ¼, ¾, é and so on. For a complete list, see this site or this site. For the grandaddy of all special characters (much more than you will ever use), see this site.
Add some special characters to sample2.htm.
By now, your sample2.htm file should look like this.
For more information on the topics of this Lesson, see this site.