Title: How do I stop pointy brackets turning into & amp ; lt;
Last modified: August 20, 2016

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# How do I stop pointy brackets turning into & amp ; lt;

 *  [vmos](https://wordpress.org/support/users/vmos/)
 * (@vmos)
 * [13 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/how-do-i-stop/)
 * This has been happening for a while and I’ve tried googling but how do you google
   < ? pointy brackets, chevrons, whatever. I tried putting one into the subject
   line and it vanished. I can’t even put the proper string in this post because
   > just turns into >
 * Anyway. If I put these <> into a post, usually it turns out OK, but if you then
   edit that post (as we frequently do with our local wordpress install) then the
   <> get turned into &am p;lt; or &am p;gt; We’ve tried using
    pre and code tags`
   and we currently have the crayon code plugin but it keeps doing it. Our posts
   often contain code or configs so we need to use < and >.
 * Can anyone point me in the right direction?`

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)

 *  [esmi](https://wordpress.org/support/users/esmi/)
 * (@esmi)
 * [13 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/how-do-i-stop/#post-3191239)
 * All such characters are automatically stripped from Post and Page titles by WordPress
   core for reasons of security. I strongly recommend that you do not do anything
   to change this as you may open a security hole for hackers to use.
 *  Thread Starter [vmos](https://wordpress.org/support/users/vmos/)
 * (@vmos)
 * [13 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/how-do-i-stop/#post-3191277)
 * This is an internal installation, only a few people can see it and even fewer
   can post to it, so we’re not that worried about security.
 * This wasn’t always a problem though, we moved the wordpress instance a few months
   back and it left the <> alone when it was on the old server.
 * The old server was debian and the new one is ubuntu, but I’m not sure which part
   of the change has caused this. Something in the php ini perhaps?
 *  [esmi](https://wordpress.org/support/users/esmi/)
 * (@esmi)
 * [13 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/how-do-i-stop/#post-3191295)
 * Not as far as I know. I’m pretty sure that all titles are run through a striptags
   and encoding filter by WordPress core.
 *  Thread Starter [vmos](https://wordpress.org/support/users/vmos/)
 * (@vmos)
 * [13 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/how-do-i-stop/#post-3191357)
 * all titles? But this is happening in the body, even within code tags. Aren’t 
   the pre and code tags supposed to mean that the formatting doesn’t get messed
   with?
 *  [esmi](https://wordpress.org/support/users/esmi/)
 * (@esmi)
 * [13 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/how-do-i-stop/#post-3191369)
 * Sorry – I meant all Post & Page titles as entered via the WP backend.
 *  [Zoinks! Graphics](https://wordpress.org/support/users/zoinks/)
 * (@zoinks)
 * [12 years, 8 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/how-do-i-stop/#post-3191444)
 * vmos, did you ever come up with a solution to your conversion issue? I’m having
   a similar problem…

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)

The topic ‘How do I stop pointy brackets turning into & amp ; lt;’ is closed to 
new replies.

 * In: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/)
 * 6 replies
 * 3 participants
 * Last reply from: [Zoinks! Graphics](https://wordpress.org/support/users/zoinks/)
 * Last activity: [12 years, 8 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/how-do-i-stop/#post-3191444)
 * Status: not resolved

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