# saxon:entity-ref

The saxon:entity-ref element is useful to generate entities such as &nbsp; in HTML output. To do this, write:

    <saxon:entity-ref name="nbsp"/>

Note: the preferred way to produce a non-breaking space character in the output is simply to write `&#160;` or `&#xa0;` in the stylesheet. By default, with HTML output, this will be serialized as `&nbsp;`, though the way it is serialized doesn't actually matter as far as the HTML browser is concerned.

`saxon:entity-ref` is permitted only in contexts where `disable-output-escaping` would be permitted: that is, when writing to a serialized output destination.

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