ASCII

Pronounced ASCII is the acronym for the American Standard Code

for Information Interchange. It is a code for representing 128 English characters as numbers,
with each letter assigned a number from 0 to 127. For example, the ASCII code
for uppercase M is 77. Most computers use ASCII codes to represent text, which makes it
possible to transfer data from one computer to another.

Recommended Reading: Webopedia's ASCII table page.

Text files stored in ASCII format are sometimes called ASCII files. Text editors and word
processors are usually capable of storing data in ASCII format, although ASCII format is not
always the default storage format. Most data files, particularly if they contain numeric data, are
not stored in ASCII format. Executable programs are never stored in ASCII format.
The standard ASCII Character Set
The standard ASCII character set uses just 7 bits for each character. There are several
larger character sets that use 8 bits, which gives them 128 additional characters. The extra
characters are used to represent non-English characters, graphics symbols, and mathematical
symbols.
Several companies and organizations have proposed extensions for these 128 characters. The
DOS operating system uses a superset of ASCII called extended ASCII or high ASCII. A more
universal standard is the ISO Latin 1 set of characters, which is used by many operating systems,
as well as Web browsers.
Another set of codes that is used on large IBM computers is EBCDIC.

What is a ASCII Code

ASCII is an acronym for American Standard Code for Information Interchange.
It is a code that uses numbers to represent characters. Each letter is assigned a number between 0
and 127. An upper and lower case character are assigned different numbers. For example the
character A is assigned the decimal number 65, while a is assigned decimal 97 as shown below
in the ASCII table.

The ASCII code predates the Internet and has been around since the days of teletypes and
mechanical printers. ASCII decimal numbers from 0 to 31 represent control codes that are not
used that much these days. However if you are playing with communications protocols you will
see these control codes in use. The ASCII Control Codes table explains what each of these
control codes is.

When is ASCII code used?

When a computer sends data the keys you press or the text you send and receive is sent as a
bunch of numbers. These numbers represent the characters you typed or generated. Because the
range of standard ASCII is 0 to 127 it only requires 7 bits or 1 byte of data. For example to send
the string cactus.io as ASCII it would translate to 99 97 99 116 117 115 46 105 111.
Microprocessors only understand bits and bytes. To it everything is a sequence of bits.

What is the difference between an ASCII code and a HTML code

The original ASCII code only had a range of 128 characters which is very limited in the range of
characters. It basically only supports the English character set. You could have used the extended
ASCII characters which ranged from 128 to 255. Because the ASCII code range is 0 to 255 it can
fit inside 1 byte of data.

The HTML code is based on the different character sets that can range from a single byte
character set such as Latin-1 (ISO-8859-1) or UTF-8 which uses multiple bytes to represent a
character. Using a charcter set such as UTF-8 gives us a much larger range of character sets.
When using a web browser the web site we are using would normally specify the character set it
is using. For example in a HTML5 web page you might see the string <meta charset="utf-
8"> in the page source. This tells the browser that the data being sent utilises the UTF-8
character table.
The HTML code is usually in the format of &#169;. The & tells the browser that it is a HTML
code and not part of a string. The # after the & tells the browser that the following is an
numerical value of a symbol. The ; is to tell the browser that is the end of the code. In the case
of &#169;, this is the html code that represents the copyright symbol ©.
Go to the Resources Toolbox for a range of HTML Code tables

Where would I use ASCII codes or HTML codes

You would use ASCII codes for all normal programming and communications when using your
Arduino, Rasperry Pi or whatever platform is in use. The only time you would HTML codes is if
you are communicating to a web browser.

ASCII Table
Ascii Hex Symbol
0 0 NUL
1 1 SOH
2 2 STX
3 3 ETX
4 4 EOT
5 5 ENQ
6 6 ACK
7 7 BEL
 8 8 BS
9 9 TAB
10 A LF
11 B VT
12 C FF
13 D CR
14 E SO
15 F SI
Ascii Hex Symbol
16 10 DLE
17 11 DC1
18 12 DC2
19 13 DC3
20 14 DC4
21 15 NAK
22 16 SYN
23 17 ETB
24 18 CAN
25 19 EM
26 1A SUB
27 1B ESC
28 1C FS
29 1D GS
30 1E RS
31 1F US
Ascii Hex Symbol
32 20 (Space)
 33 21 !
34 22 "
35 23 #
36 24 $
37 25 %
38 26 &
39 27 '
40 28 (
41 29 )
42 2A *
43 2B +
44 2C ,
45 2D -
46 2E .
47 2F /
Ascii Hex Symbol
48 30 0
49 31 1
50 32 2
51 33 3
52 34 4
53 35 5
53 36 6
55 37 7
56 38 8
57 39 9
58 3A :
 59 3B ;
60 3C <
61 3D =
62 3E >
63 3F ?
Ascii Hex Symbol
64 40 @
65 41 A
66 42 B
67 43 C
68 44 D
69 45 E
70 46 F
71 47 G
72 48 H
73 49 I
74 4A J
75 4B K
76 4C L
77 4D M
78 4E N
79 4F O
Ascii Hex Symbol
80 50 P
81 51 Q
82 52 R
83 53 S
 84 54 T
85 55 U
86 56 V
87 57 W
88 58 X
89 59 Y
90 5A Z
91 5B [
92 5C \
93 5D ]
94 5E ^
95 5F _
Ascii Hex Symbol
96 60 '
97 61 a
98 62 b
99 63 c
100 64 d
101 65 e
102 66 f
103 67 g
104 68 h
105 69 i
106 6A j
107 6B k
108 6C l
109 6D m
 110 6E n
111 6F o
Ascii Hex Symbol
112 70 p
113 71 q
114 72 r
115 73 s
116 74 t
117 75 u
118 76 v
119 77 w
120 78 x
121 79 y
122 7A z
123 7B (
124 7C |
125 7D )
126 7E ~
127 7F

ASCII Stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange (pronounced 'as-key').
This is a standard set of characters understood by all computers, consisting mostly of letters and
numbers plus a few basic symbols such as $ and %. Which employs the 128 possible 7-bit
integers to encode the 52 uppercase and lowercase letters and 10 numeric digits of the Roman
alphabet, plus punctuation characters and some other symbols? The fact that almost everyone
agrees on ASCII makes it relatively easy to exchange information between different programs,
different operating systems, and even different computers.
It also means you can easily print basic text and numbers on any printer, with the notable
exception of PostScript printers. If you are working in the MacWrite word processing application
on the Mac and you need to send your file to someone who uses WordStar on the PC, you can
save the document as an ASCII file (which is the same as text-only). After you transfer the file to
the PC (on a disk or via a cable or modem),the other person will be able to open the file in
WordStar.
In ASCII, each character has a number which the computer or printer uses to represent that
character. For instance, a capitalAis number 65 in the code. Although there are 256 possible
characters in the code, ASCII standardizes only 128 characters, and the first 32 of these are
"control characters," which are supposed to be used to control the computer and don't appear on
the screen. That leaves only enough code numbers for all the capital and lowercase letters, the
digits, and the most common punctuation marks.
Another ASCII limitation is that the code doesn't include any information about the way the text
should look (its format). ASCIIonly tells you which characters the text contains. If you save a
formatted document asASCII,you will lose all the font formatting, such as the typeface changes,
the italics, the bolds, and even the special characters like ©, TM, or ®. Usually carriage returns
and tabs are saved.
Unlike some earlier character encodings that used fewer than 7 bits, ASCII does have room for
both the uppercase and lowercase letters and all normal punctuation characters but, as it was
designed to encode American English it does not include the accented characters and ligatures
required by many European languages (nor the UK pound sign £). These characters are provided
in some 8-bit EXTENDED ASCII character sets, including ISO LATIN 1 or ANSI 1, but not all
software can display 8-bit characters, and some serial communications channels still remove the
eighth bit from each character. Despite its shortcomings, ASCII is still important as the 'lowest
common denominator' for representing textual data, which almost any computer in the world can
display.
The ASCII standard was certified by ANSI in 1977,and the ISO adopted an almost identical code
as ISO 646.
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Why is ASCII important?

ASCII is important because it is our link between our computer screen and our computer hard
drive, and that link is now the same between all computers.

What is ASCII used for?

ASCII is used to translate computer text to human text.

All computers speak in binary, a series of 0 and 1. However, just like English and Spanish can
use the same alphabet but have completely different words for similar objects, computers also
had their own version of languages. ASCII is used as a method to give all computers the same
language, allowing them to share documents and files.

ASCII is important because the development gave computers a common language.

What does ASCII stand for?

ASCII is an acronym that stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange.
What are ASCII tables used for?

ASCII tables are well known in computer circles because they are the babble fish that works
between computer hard drives and humans.

Babble fish, if you don’t know, is a fish from Hitchhiker’s Guide of the Galaxy that can be put in
your ear to translate alien languages. Having the common tables in ASCII was important for
computers to be able to talk to each other.

Hard drives store information on magnets (or transistors), that only have two states, on and off.
ASCII tables are how we go from a set of eight 0s and 1s (or a byte of data) to the letter “a” or
“A”, or the number “4”. The tables are commonly used across all computer systems, which allow
my computer to read word documents written on your computer, even if I use a PC and you use a
Mac – and no, it was not always like that! The tables include the ASCII alphabet, ASCII binary,
ASCII symbols and more!

What are activities that include ASCII and

binary?

We just answered why is ASCII important, and what is ASCII used for. If you want to learn
more about ASCII tables and the binary language we have two downloadable projects for you
– stamping your initials in binary and writing I Love You in binary. Both projects have an ASCII
alphabet table to convert the binary to letters.
Check out the video below to learn even more about how ASCII tables are used when computers
read and write data in binary. Learn binary and imaging in our newest Teachers Pay
Teachers unit! There is a great binary imaging sheet that you can even download for FREE!
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