ASCII character chart

Numbers are the language of computers. To communicate with programs (and with other computers), your computer converts characters and symbols into their numeric representations.

In the 1960s, a need for standardization led to American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) (pronounced ask-kee). The ASCII chart contains 128 numbers assigned to corresponding characters. ASCII provides a way that computers can store and exchange data with other computers and programs.

ASCII-formatted text contains no formatting information such as bold, italic, or fonts. When you use Microsoft Notepad or save a file as plain text in Microsoft Office Word, ASCII is used. You might have read an advertisement for a job opening where the employer asked for resumes in ASCII format. This means whether you send your resume in an e-mail message, fax, or as a printed copy, the employer wants your resume to contain no special style formatting. ASCII-formatted text works well with Optical Character Recognition (OCR) scanning software, which large companies frequently use to scan resumes.In this article

Insert an ASCII character into a document

ASCII printing characters

Extended ASCII printing characters

ASCII non-printing control characters

Beyond ASCII

Insert an ASCII character into a document

In addition to typing a character on your keyboard, you can also use the character code of the symbol as a shortcut, or when a symbol isn't available on the keyboard you are using.

• To insert an ASCII character from the charts below, press and hold down ALT while typing the decimal numeric equivalent.

  For example, to insert the degree (º) symbol, press and hold down ALT while typing 0176 on the numeric keypad.

  Note You must use the numeric keypad to type the numbers and not the keyboard. Make sure that the NUM LOCK key is on if your keyboard requires it to type numbers on the numeric keypad.

ASCII printing characters

Numbers 32-126 are assigned to characters that you would find on your keyboard and appear when you view or print a document. Number 127 represents the DELETE command.

ASCII printing characters chart

Tip You can reference the extended character set for a particular font using the Character Map program in Microsoft Windows. Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, point to System Tools, and then click Character Map.

Extended ASCII printing characters

Extended ASCII characters meet the demand for more characters. Extended ASCII includes the 128 characters found in ASCII (numbers 0-32 appear in a following chart), and adds an additional 128 characters for 256 total. Even with these additional characters, many languages contain symbols that could not be condensed into 256 characters. Because of this, there are variants of ASCII to encompass regional characters and symbols.

For example, the ASCII table also known as ISO 8859-1 is used by many software programs for languages in North America, Western Europe, Australia, and Africa.

Extended ASCII printing characters chart

Tip You can reference the extended character set for a particular font using the Character Map program in Microsoft Windows. Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, point to System Tools, and then click Character Map.

ASCII non-printing control characters

Numbers 0-31 on the ASCII table are assigned for control characters that are used to control some peripheral devices such as printers. For example, 12 represents the form feed/new page function. This command instructs a printer to skip to the top of the next page.

ASCII non-printing control characters chart

Beyond ASCII

Another, newer table of characters is called Unicode. Because Unicode is a much larger table, it can represent 65,536 characters instead of the 128 of ASCII or 256 of extended ASCII. This larger capacity allows most characters of different languages to be included in one character set.