diff --git a/lib/markup.php b/lib/markup.php
index 69814df..8bb63ab 100644
--- a/lib/markup.php
+++ b/lib/markup.php
@@ -22,7 +22,7 @@ class markup {
             if (pcre_no_error($result)) {
                 $reftitles_map = [];
                 foreach ($matches[2] as $i => $refname) {
-                    $reftitles_map[$refname] = trim(strip_tags($matches[3][$i]));
+                    $reftitles_map[$refname] = trim(htmlspecialchars_decode(strip_tags($matches[3][$i])));
                 }
                 $span_opening_tag = '<span class="blog-footnote-ref">';
                 $html = preg_replace($re, '<p class="blog-footnote-line" id="footnote_$2">'.$span_opening_tag.'$1</span> $3</p>', $html);