ASCII - wikipedia ASCII Not to be confused with MS Windows - 1252 or other types of extended ASCII. This article is about the character encoding. For other uses, see ASCII ( disambiguation ). US - ASCII ASCII ( 1967 or later ) MIME / IANA us - ascii Alias ( es ) ASCII Language ( s ) English Classification ISO 646 series Extensions UTF - 8 ISO 8859 ( series ) KOI - 8 OEM ( series ) Windows - 125x ( series ) Others Preceded by ITA 2, FIELDATA Succeeded by ISO 8859, Unicode Other related encoding ( s ) PETSCII ASCII ( / ˈæski / ( listen ) ASK - eee ), abbreviated from American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for electronic communication. ASCII codes represent text in computers, telecommunications equipment, and other devices. Most modern character - encoding schemes are based on ASCII, although they support many additional characters. ASCII is the traditional name for the encoding system ; the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority ( IANA ) prefers the updated name US - ASCII, which clarifies that this system was developed in the US and based on the typographical symbols predominantly in use there. ASCII is one of the IEEE milestones. ASCII chart from an earlier - than 1972 printer manual ( b1 is the least significant bit. ) Contents 1 Overview 2 History 3 Design considerations 3.1 Bit width 3.2 Internal organization 3.3 Character order 4 Character groups 4.1 Control characters 4.2 Printable characters 4.3 Character set 5 Use 6 Variants and derivations 6.1 7 - bit codes 6.2 8 - bit codes 6.3 Unicode 7 See also 8 Notes 9 References 10 Further reading 11 External links Overview ASCII was developed from telegraph code. Its first commercial use was as a seven - bit teleprinter code promoted by Bell data services. Work on the ASCII standard began on October 6, 1960, with the first meeting of the American Standards Association 's ( ASA ) ( now the American National Standards Institute or ANSI ) X3. 2 subcommittee. The first edition of the standard was published in 1963, underwent a major revision during 1967, and experienced its most recent update during 1986. Compared to earlier telegraph codes, the proposed Bell code and ASCII were both ordered for more convenient sorting ( i.e., alphabetization ) of lists, and added features for devices other than teleprinters. Originally based on the English alphabet, ASCII encodes 128 specified characters into seven - bit integers as shown by the ASCII chart above. Ninety - five of the encoded characters are printable : these include the digits 0 to 9, lowercase letters a to z, uppercase letters A to Z, and punctuation symbols. In addition, the original ASCII specification included 33 non-printing control codes which originated with Teletype machines ; most of these are now obsolete. For example, lowercase i would be represented in the ASCII encoding by binary 1101001 = hexadecimal 69 ( i is the ninth letter ) = decimal 105. History ASCII ( 1963 ). Control pictures of equivalent controls are shown where they exist, or a grey dot otherwise. The American Standard Code for Information Interchange ( ASCII ) was developed under the auspices of a committee of the American Standards Association ( ASA ), called the X3 committee, by its X3. 2 ( later X3L2 ) subcommittee, and later by that subcommittee 's X3. 2.4 working group ( now INCITS ). The ASA became the United States of America Standards Institute ( USASI ) and ultimately the American National Standards Institute ( ANSI ). With the other special characters and control codes filled in, ASCII was published as ASA X3. 4 - 1963, leaving 28 code positions without any assigned meaning, reserved for future standardization, and one unassigned control code. There was some debate at the time whether there should be more control characters rather than the lowercase alphabet. The indecision did not last long : during May 1963 the CCITT Working Party on the New Telegraph Alphabet proposed to assign lowercase characters to sticks 6 and 7, and International Organization for Standardization TC 97 SC 2 voted during October to incorporate the change into its draft standard. The X3. 2.4 task group voted its approval for the change to ASCII at its May 1963 meeting. Locating the lowercase letters in sticks 6 and 7 caused the characters to differ in bit pattern from the upper case by a single bit, which simplified case - insensitive character matching and the construction of keyboards and printers. The X3 committee made other changes, including other new characters ( the brace and vertical bar characters ), renaming some control characters ( SOM became start of header ( SOH ) ) and moving or removing others ( RU was removed ). ASCII was subsequently updated as USAS X3. 4 - 1967, then USAS X3. 4 - 1968, ANSI X3. 4 - 1977, and finally, ANSI X3. 4 - 1986. Revisions of the ASCII standard : ASA X3. 4 - 1963 ASA X3. 4 - 1965 ( approved, but not published, nevertheless used by IBM 2260 & 2265 Display Stations and IBM 2848 Display Control ) USAS X3. 4 - 1967 USAS X3. 4 - 1968 ANSI X3. 4 - 1977 ANSI X3. 4 - 1986 ANSI X3. 4 - 1986 ( R1992 ) ANSI X3. 4 - 1986 ( R1997 ) ANSI INCITS 4 - 1986 ( R2002 ) ANSI INCITS 4 - 1986 ( R2007 ) ANSI INCITS 4 - 1986 ( R2012 ) In the X3. 15 standard, the X3 committee also addressed how ASCII should be transmitted ( least significant bit first ), and how it should be recorded on perforated tape. They proposed a 9 - track standard for magnetic tape, and attempted to deal with some punched card formats. Design considerations Bit width The X3. 2 subcommittee designed ASCII based on the earlier teleprinter encoding systems. Like other character encodings, ASCII specifies a correspondence between digital bit patterns and character symbols ( i.e. graphemes and control characters ). This allows digital devices to communicate with each other and to process, store, and communicate character - oriented information such as written language. Before ASCII was developed, the encodings in use included 26 alphabetic characters, 10 numerical digits, and from 11 to 25 special graphic symbols. To include all these, and control characters compatible with the Comité Consultatif International Téléphonique et Télégraphique ( CCITT ) International Telegraph Alphabet No. 2 ( ITA2 ) standard of 1924, FIELDATA ( 1956 ), and early EBCDIC ( 1963 ), more than 64 codes were required for ASCII. ITA2 were in turn based on the 5 - bit telegraph code Émile Baudot invented in 1870 and patented in 1874. The committee debated the possibility of a shift function ( like in ITA2 ), which would allow more than 64 codes to be represented by a six - bit code. In a shifted code, some character codes determine choices between options for the following character codes. It allows compact encoding, but is less reliable for data transmission, as an error in transmitting the shift code typically makes a long part of the transmission unreadable. The standards committee decided against shifting, and so ASCII required at least a seven - bit code. The committee considered an eight - bit code, since eight bits ( octets ) would allow two four - bit patterns to efficiently encode two digits with binary - coded decimal. However, it would require all data transmission to send eight bits when seven could suffice. The committee voted to use a seven - bit code to minimize costs associated with data transmission. Since perforated tape at the time could record eight bits in one position, it also allowed for a parity bit for error checking if desired. Eight - bit machines ( with octets as the native data type ) that did not use parity checking typically set the eighth bit to 0. In some printers, the high bit was used to enable Italics printing. Internal organization The code itself was patterned so that most control codes were together and all graphic codes were together, for ease of identification. The first two so called ASCII sticks ( 32 positions ) were reserved for control characters. The `` space '' character had to come before graphics to make sorting easier, so it became position 20 ; for the same reason, many special signs commonly used as separators were placed before digits. The committee decided it was important to support uppercase 64 - character alphabets, and chose to pattern ASCII so it could be reduced easily to a usable 64 - character set of graphic codes, as was done in the DEC SIXBIT code ( 1963 ). Lowercase letters were therefore not interleaved with uppercase. To keep options available for lowercase letters and other graphics, the special and numeric codes were arranged before the letters, and the letter A was placed in position 41 to match the draft of the corresponding British standard. The digits 0 -- 9 are prefixed with 011, but the remaining 4 bits correspond to their respective values in binary, making conversion with binary - coded decimal straightforward. Many of the non-alphanumeric characters were positioned to correspond to their shifted position on typewriters ; an important subtlety is that these were based on mechanical typewriters, not electric typewriters. Mechanical typewriters followed the standard set by the Remington No. 2 ( 1878 ), the first typewriter with a shift key, and the shifted values of 23456789 - were `` # $ % _& ' ( ) -- early typewriters omitted 0 and 1, using O ( capital letter o ) and l ( lowercase letter L ) instead, but 1 ! and 0 ) pairs became standard once 0 and 1 became common. Thus, in ASCII ! '' # $ % were placed in the second stick, positions 1 -- 5, corresponding to the digits 1 -- 5 in the adjacent stick. The parentheses could not correspond to 9 and 0, however, because the place corresponding to 0 was taken by the space character. This was accommodated by removing _ ( underscore ) from 6 and shifting the remaining characters, which corresponded to many European typewriters that placed the parentheses with 8 and 9. This discrepancy from typewriters led to bit - paired keyboards, notably the Teletype Model 33, which used the left - shifted layout corresponding to ASCII, not to traditional mechanical typewriters. Electric typewriters, notably the IBM Selectric ( 1961 ), used a somewhat different layout that has become standard on computers -- following the IBM PC ( 1981 ), especially Model M ( 1984 ) -- and thus shift values for symbols on modern keyboards do not correspond as closely to the ASCII table as earlier keyboards did. The / ? pair also dates to the No. 2, and the, <. > pairs were used on some keyboards ( others, including the No. 2, did not shift, ( comma ) or. ( full stop ) so they could be used in uppercase without unshifting ). However, ASCII split the ; : pair ( dating to No. 2 ), and rearranged mathematical symbols ( varied conventions, commonly - * = + ) to :* ; + - =. Some common characters were not included, notably 1⁄21⁄4 ¢, while ^ ` ~ were included as diacritics for international use, and < > for mathematical use, together with the simple line characters ( in addition to common / ). The @ symbol was not used in continental Europe and the committee expected it would be replaced by an accented À in the French variation, so the @ was placed in position 40, right before the letter A. The control codes felt essential for data transmission were the start of message ( SOM ), end of address ( EOA ), end of message ( EOM ), end of transmission ( EOT ), `` who are you ? '' ( WRU ), `` are you ? '' ( RU ), a reserved device control ( DC0 ), synchronous idle ( SYNC ), and acknowledge ( ACK ). These were positioned to maximize the Hamming distance between their bit patterns. Character order ASCII - code order is also called ASCIIbetical order. Collation of data is sometimes done in this order rather than `` standard '' alphabetical order ( collating sequence ). The main deviations in ASCII order are : All uppercase come before lowercase letters ; for example, `` Z '' precedes `` a '' Digits and many punctuation marks come before letters An intermediate order converts uppercase letters to lowercase before comparing ASCII values. Character groups Control characters Main article : Control character ASCII reserves the first 32 codes ( numbers 0 -- 31 decimal ) for control characters : codes originally intended not to represent printable information, but rather to control devices ( such as printers ) that make use of ASCII, or to provide meta - information about data streams such as those stored on magnetic tape. For example, character 10 represents the `` line feed '' function ( which causes a printer to advance its paper ), and character 8 represents `` backspace ''. RFC 2822 refers to control characters that do not include carriage return, line feed or white space as non-whitespace control characters. Except for the control characters that prescribe elementary line - oriented formatting, ASCII does not define any mechanism for describing the structure or appearance of text within a document. Other schemes, such as markup languages, address page and document layout and formatting. The original ASCII standard used only short descriptive phrases for each control character. The ambiguity this caused was sometimes intentional, for example where a character would be used slightly differently on a terminal link than on a data stream, and sometimes accidental, for example with the meaning of `` delete ''. Probably the most influential single device on the interpretation of these characters was the Teletype Model 33 ASR, which was a printing terminal with an available paper tape reader / punch option. Paper tape was a very popular medium for long - term program storage until the 1980s, less costly and in some ways less fragile than magnetic tape. In particular, the Teletype Model 33 machine assignments for codes 17 ( Control - Q, DC1, also known as XON ), 19 ( Control - S, DC3, also known as XOFF ), and 127 ( Delete ) became de facto standards. The Model 33 was also notable for taking the description of Control - G ( code 7, BEL, meaning audibly alert the operator ) literally, as the unit contained an actual bell which it rang when it received a BEL character. Because the keytop for the O key also showed a left - arrow symbol ( from ASCII - 1963, which had this character instead of underscore ), a noncompliant use of code 15 ( Control - O, Shift In ) interpreted as `` delete previous character '' was also adopted by many early timesharing systems but eventually became neglected. When a Teletype 33 ASR equipped with the automatic paper tape reader received a Control - S ( XOFF, an abbreviation for transmit off ), it caused the tape reader to stop ; receiving Control - Q ( XON, `` transmit on '' ) caused the tape reader to resume. This technique became adopted by several early computer operating systems as a `` handshaking '' signal warning a sender to stop transmission because of impending overflow ; it persists to this day in many systems as a manual output control technique. On some systems Control - S retains its meaning but Control - Q is replaced by a second Control - S to resume output. The 33 ASR also could be configured to employ Control - R ( DC2 ) and Control - T ( DC4 ) to start and stop the tape punch ; on some units equipped with this function, the corresponding control character lettering on the keycap above the letter was TAPE and TAPE respectively. The Teletype could not move the head backwards, so it did not put a key on the keyboard to send a BS ( backspace ). Instead there was a key marked `` rubout '' that sent code 127 ( DEL ). The purpose of this key was to erase mistakes in a hand - typed paper tape : the operator had to push a button on the tape punch to back it up, then type the rubout, which punched all holes and replaced the mistake with a character that was intended to be ignored. Teletypes were commonly used for the less - expensive computers from Digital Equipment Corporation, so these systems had to use the available key and thus the DEL code to erase the previous character. Because of this, DEC video terminals ( by default ) sent the DEL code for the key marked `` Backspace '' while the key marked `` Delete '' sent an escape sequence, while many other terminals sent BS for the Backspace key. The Unix terminal driver could only use one code to back up, this could be set to BS or DEL, but not both, resulting in a very long period of annoyance where you had to correct it depending on what terminal you were using ( modern shells using readline understand both codes ). The assumption that no key sent a BS caused Control + H to be used for other purposes, such as a `` help '' command in Emacs. Many more of the control codes have been given meanings quite different from their original ones. The `` escape '' character ( ESC, code 27 ), for example, was intended originally to allow sending other control characters as literals instead of invoking their meaning. This is the same meaning of `` escape '' encountered in URL encodings, C language strings, and other systems where certain characters have a reserved meaning. Over time this meaning has been co-opted and has eventually been changed. In modern use, an ESC sent to the terminal usually indicates the start of a command sequence usually in the form of a so - called `` ANSI escape code '' ( or, more properly, a `` Control Sequence Introducer '' ) from ECMA - 48 ( 1972 ) and its successors, beginning with ESC followed by a `` ( '' ( left - bracket ) character. An ESC sent from the terminal is most often used as an out - of - band character used to terminate an operation, as in the TECO and vi text editors. In graphical user interface ( GUI ) and windowing systems, ESC generally causes an application to abort its current operation or to exit ( terminate ) altogether. The inherent ambiguity of many control characters, combined with their historical usage, created problems when transferring `` plain text '' files between systems. The best example of this is the newline problem on various operating systems. Teletype machines required that a line of text be terminated with both `` Carriage Return '' ( which moves the printhead to the beginning of the line ) and `` Line Feed '' ( which advances the paper one line without moving the printhead ). The name `` Carriage Return '' comes from the fact that on a manual typewriter the carriage holding the paper moved while the position where the typebars struck the ribbon remained stationary. The entire carriage had to be pushed ( returned ) to the right in order to position the left margin of the paper for the next line. DEC operating systems ( OS / 8, RT - 11, RSX - 11, RSTS, TOPS - 10, etc. ) used both characters to mark the end of a line so that the console device ( originally Teletype machines ) would work. By the time so - called `` glass TTYs '' ( later called CRTs or terminals ) came along, the convention was so well established that backward compatibility necessitated continuing the convention. When Gary Kildall created CP / M he was inspired by some command line interface conventions used in DEC 's RT - 11. Until the introduction of PC DOS in 1981, IBM had no hand in this because their 1970s operating systems used EBCDIC instead of ASCII and they were oriented toward punch - card input and line printer output on which the concept of carriage return was meaningless. IBM 's PC DOS ( also marketed as MS - DOS by Microsoft ) inherited the convention by virtue of being loosely based on CP / M, and Windows inherited it from MS - DOS. Unfortunately, requiring two characters to mark the end of a line introduces unnecessary complexity and questions as to how to interpret each character when encountered alone. To simplify matters plain text data streams, including files, on Multics used line feed ( LF ) alone as a line terminator. Unix and Unix - like systems, and Amiga systems, adopted this convention from Multics. The original Macintosh OS, Apple DOS, and ProDOS, on the other hand, used carriage return ( CR ) alone as a line terminator ; however, since Apple replaced these operating systems with the Unix - based macOS operating system, they now use line feed ( LF ) as well. The Radio Shack TRS - 80 also used a lone CR to terminate lines. Computers attached to the ARPANET included machines running operating systems such as TOPS - 10 and TENEX using CR - LF line endings, machines running operating systems such as Multics using LF line endings, and machines running operating systems such as OS / 360 that represented lines as a character count followed by the characters of the line and that used EBCDIC rather than ASCII. The Telnet protocol defined an ASCII `` Network Virtual Terminal '' ( NVT ), so that connections between hosts with different line - ending conventions and character sets could be supported by transmitting a standard text format over the network. Telnet used ASCII along with CR - LF line endings, and software using other conventions would translate between the local conventions and the NVT. The File Transfer Protocol adopted the Telnet protocol, including use of the Network Virtual Terminal, for use when transmitting commands and transferring data in the default ASCII mode. This adds complexity to implementations of those protocols, and to other network protocols, such as those used for E-mail and the World Wide Web, on systems not using the NVT 's CR - LF line - ending convention. The PDP - 6 monitor, and its PDP - 10 successor TOPS - 10, used Control - Z ( SUB ) as an end - of - file indication for input from a terminal. Some operating systems such as CP / M tracked file length only in units of disk blocks and used Control - Z to mark the end of the actual text in the file. For these reasons, EOF, or end - of - file, was used colloquially and conventionally as a three - letter acronym for Control - Z instead of SUBstitute. The end - of - text code ( ETX ), also known as Control - C, was inappropriate for a variety of reasons, while using Z as the control code to end a file is analogous to it ending the alphabet and serves as a very convenient mnemonic aid. A historically common and still prevalent convention uses the ETX code convention to interrupt and halt a program via an input data stream, usually from a keyboard. In C library and Unix conventions, the null character is used to terminate text strings ; such null - terminated strings can be known in abbreviation as ASCIZ or ASCIIZ, where here Z stands for `` zero ''. Binary Oct Dec Hex Abbreviation Name ( ' 67 ) ' 63 ' 65 ' 67 000 0000 000 0 00 NULL NUL ␀ ^ @ 0 Null 000 0001 001 01 SOM SOH ␁ ^ A Start of Heading 000 0010 002 02 EOA STX ␂ ^ B Start of Text 000 0011 003 03 EOM ETX ␃ ^ C End of Text 000 0100 004 04 EOT ␄ ^ D End of Transmission 000 0101 005 5 05 WRU ENQ ␅ ^ E Enquiry 000 0110 006 6 06 RU ACK ␆ ^ F Acknowledgement 000 0111 007 7 07 BELL BEL ␇ ^ G a Bell 000 1000 010 8 08 FE0 BS ␈ ^ H \b Backspace 000 1001 011 9 09 HT / SK HT ␉ ^ I \t Horizontal Tab 000 1010 012 10 0A LF ␊ ^ J \n Line Feed 000 1011 013 11 0B VTAB VT ␋ ^ K \v Vertical Tab 000 1100 014 12 0C FF ␌ ^ L \f Form Feed 000 1101 015 13 0D CR ␍ ^ M \r Carriage Return 000 1110 016 14 0E SO ␎ ^ N Shift Out 000 1111 017 15 0F SI ␏ ^ O Shift In 001 0000 020 16 10 DC0 DLE ␐ ^ P Data Link Escape 001 0001 021 17 11 DC1 ␑ ^ Q Device Control 1 ( often XON ) 001 0010 022 18 12 DC2 ␒ ^ R Device Control 2 001 0011 023 19 13 DC3 ␓ ^ S Device Control 3 ( often XOFF ) 001 0100 024 20 14 DC4 ␔ ^ T Device Control 4 001 0101 025 21 15 ERR NAK ␕ ^ U Negative Acknowledgement 001 0110 026 22 16 SYNC SYN ␖ ^ V Synchronous Idle 001 0111 027 23 17 LEM ETB ␗ ^ W End of Transmission Block 001 1000 030 24 18 S0 CAN ␘ ^ X Cancel 001 1001 031 25 19 S1 EM ␙ ^ Y End of Medium 001 1010 032 26 1A S2 SS SUB ␚ ^ Z Substitute 001 1011 033 27 1B S3 ESC ␛ ^ ( e Escape 001 1100 034 28 1C S4 FS ␜ ^ File Separator 001 1101 035 29 1D S5 GS ␝ ^ ) Group Separator 001 1110 036 30 1E S6 RS ␞ ^ ^ Record Separator 001 1111 037 31 1F S7 US ␟ ^ _ Unit Separator 111 1111 177 127 7F DEL ␡ ^ ? Delete Other representations might be used by specialist equipment, for example ISO 2047 graphics or hexadecimal numbers. Printable characters Codes 20 to 7E, known as the printable characters, represent letters, digits, punctuation marks, and a few miscellaneous symbols. There are 95 printable characters in total. Code 20, the `` space '' character, denotes the space between words, as produced by the space bar of a keyboard. Since the space character is considered an invisible graphic ( rather than a control character ) it is listed in the table below instead of in the previous section. Code 7F corresponds to the non-printable `` delete '' ( DEL ) control character and is therefore omitted from this chart ; it is covered in the previous section 's chart. Earlier versions of ASCII used the up arrow instead of the caret ( 5E ) and the left arrow instead of the underscore ( 5F ). Binary Oct Dec Hex Glyph ' 63 ' 65 ' 67 010 0000 040 32 20 space 010 0001 041 33 21 ! 010 0010 042 34 22 `` 010 0011 043 35 23 # 010 0100 044 36 24 $ 010 0101 045 37 25 % 010 0110 046 38 26 & 010 0111 047 39 27 ' 010 1000 050 40 28 ( 010 1001 051 41 29 ) 010 1010 052 42 2A * 010 1011 053 43 2B + 010 1100 054 44 2C, 010 1101 055 45 2D - 010 1110 056 46 2E. 010 1111 057 47 2F / 011 0000 060 48 30 0 011 0001 061 49 31 011 0010 062 50 32 011 0011 063 51 33 011 0100 064 52 34 011 0101 065 53 35 5 011 0110 066 54 36 6 011 0111 067 55 37 7 011 1000 070 56 38 8 011 1001 071 57 39 9 011 1010 072 58 3A : 011 1011 073 59 3B ; 011 1100 074 60 3C < 011 1101 075 61 3D = 011 1110 076 62 3E > 011 1111 077 63 3F ? 100 0000 100 64 40 @ ` @ 100 0001 101 65 41 100 0010 102 66 42 100 0011 103 67 43 100 0100 104 68 44 100 0101 105 69 45 100 0110 106 70 46 100 0111 107 71 47 100 1000 110 72 48 100 1001 111 73 49 100 1010 112 74 4A J 100 1011 113 75 4B 100 1100 114 76 4C 100 1101 115 77 4D 100 1110 116 78 4E 100 1111 117 79 4F O 101 0000 120 80 50 101 0001 121 81 51 Q 101 0010 122 82 52 101 0011 123 83 53 101 0100 124 84 54 101 0101 125 85 55 U 101 0110 126 86 56 V 101 0111 127 87 57 101 1000 130 88 58 X 101 1001 131 89 59 Y 101 1010 132 90 5A Z 101 1011 133 91 5B 101 1100 134 92 5C ~ 101 1101 135 93 5D 101 1110 136 94 5E ↑ 101 1111 137 95 5F ← _ 110 0000 140 96 60 @ ` 110 0001 141 97 61 110 0010 142 98 62 110 0011 143 99 63 110 0100 144 100 64 d 110 0101 145 101 65 110 0110 146 102 66 f 110 0111 147 103 67 g 110 1000 150 104 68 h 110 1001 151 105 69 i 110 1010 152 106 6A j 110 1011 153 107 6B k 110 1100 154 108 6C l 110 1101 155 109 6D m 110 1110 156 110 6E n 110 1111 157 111 6F o 111 0000 160 112 70 p 111 0001 161 113 71 q 111 0010 162 114 72 r 111 0011 163 115 73 s 111 0100 164 116 74 111 0101 165 117 75 u 111 0110 166 118 76 111 0111 167 119 77 w 111 1000 170 120 78 x 111 1001 171 121 79 y 111 1010 172 122 7A z 111 1011 173 123 7B ( 111 1100 174 124 7C ACK ¬ 111 1101 175 125 7D ) 111 1110 176 126 7E ESC ~ Character set Letter Number Punctuation Symbol Other undefined ASCII ( 1977 / 1986 ) _0 _1 _2 _3 _4 _5 _6 _7 _8 _9 _A _B _C _D _E _F 0_ NUL 0000 0 SOH 0001 STX 0002 ETX 0003 EOT 0004 ENQ 0005 5 ACK 0006 6 BEL 0007 7 BS 0008 8 HT 0009 9 LF 000A 10 VT 000B 11 FF 000C 12 CR 000D 13 SO 000E 14 SI 000F 15 1_ DLE 0010 16 DC1 0011 17 DC2 0012 18 DC3 0013 19 DC4 0014 20 NAK 0015 21 SYN 0016 22 ETB 0017 23 CAN 0018 24 EM 0019 25 SUB 001A 26 ESC 001B 27 FS 001C 28 GS 001D 29 RS 001E 30 US 001F 31 2_ SP 0020 32 ! 0021 33 `` 0022 34 # 0023 35 $ 0024 36 % 0025 37 & 0026 38 ' 0027 39 ( 0028 40 ) 0029 41 * 002A 42 + 002B 43, 002C 44 - 002D 45. 002E 46 / 002F 47 3_ 0 0030 48 0031 49 0032 50 0033 51 0034 52 5 0035 53 6 0036 54 7 0037 55 8 0038 56 9 0039 57 : 003A 58 ; 003B 59 < 003C 60 = 003D 61 > 003E 62 ? 003F 63 4_ @ 0040 64 0041 65 0042 66 0043 67 0044 68 0045 69 0046 70 0047 71 0048 72 0049 73 J 004A 74 004B 75 004C 76 004D 77 004E 78 O 004F 79 5_ 0050 80 Q 0051 81 0052 82 0053 83 0054 84 U 0055 85 V 0056 86 0057 87 X 0058 88 Y 0059 89 Z 005A 90 005B 91 005C 92 005D 93 005E 94 _ 005F 95 6_ ` 0060 96 0061 97 0062 98 0063 99 d 0064 100 0065 101 f 0066 102 g 0067 103 h 0068 104 i 0069 105 j 006A 106 k 006B 107 l 006C 108 m 006D 109 n 006E 110 o 006F 111 7_ p 0070 112 q 0071 113 r 0072 114 s 0073 115 0074 116 u 0075 117 0076 118 w 0077 119 x 0078 120 y 0079 121 z 007A 122 ( 007B 123 007C 124 ) 007D 125 ~ 007E 126 DEL 007F 127 Use ASCII was first used commercially during 1963 as a seven - bit teleprinter code for American Telephone & Telegraph 's TWX ( TeletypeWriter eXchange ) network. TWX originally used the earlier five - bit ITA2, which was also used by the competing Telex teleprinter system. Bob Bemer introduced features such as the escape sequence. His British colleague Hugh McGregor Ross helped to popularize this work -- according to Bemer, `` so much so that the code that was to become ASCII was first called the Bemer - Ross Code in Europe ''. Because of his extensive work on ASCII, Bemer has been called `` the father of ASCII ''. On March 11, 1968, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson mandated that all computers purchased by the United States federal government support ASCII, stating : I have also approved recommendations of the Secretary of Commerce regarding standards for recording the Standard Code for Information Interchange on magnetic tapes and paper tapes when they are used in computer operations. All computers and related equipment configurations brought into the Federal Government inventory on and after July 1, 1969, must have the capability to use the Standard Code for Information Interchange and the formats prescribed by the magnetic tape and paper tape standards when these media are used. ASCII was the most common character encoding on the World Wide Web until December 2007, when UTF - 8 encoding surpassed it ; UTF - 8 is backward compatible with ASCII. Variants and derivations As computer technology spread throughout the world, different standards bodies and corporations developed many variations of ASCII to facilitate the expression of non-English languages that used Roman - based alphabets. One could class some of these variations as `` ASCII extensions '', although some misuse that term to represent all variants, including those that do not preserve ASCII 's character - map in the 7 - bit range. Furthermore, the ASCII extensions have also been mislabelled as ASCII. 7 - bit codes Main articles : ECMA - 6, ISO / IEC 646, and ITU T. 50 See also : UTF - 7 From early in its development, ASCII was intended to be just one of several national variants of an international character code standard. Other international standards bodies have ratified character encodings such as ISO 646 ( 1967 ) that are identical or nearly identical to ASCII, with extensions for characters outside the English alphabet and symbols used outside the United States, such as the symbol for the United Kingdom 's pound sterling ( £ ). Almost every country needed an adapted version of ASCII, since ASCII suited the needs of only the US and a few other countries. For example, Canada had its own version that supported French characters. Many other countries developed variants of ASCII to include non-English letters ( e.g. é, ñ, ß, Ł ), currency symbols ( e.g. £, ¥ ), etc. See also YUSCII ( Yugoslavia ). It would share most characters in common, but assign other locally useful characters to several code points reserved for `` national use ''. However, the four years that elapsed between the publication of ASCII - 1963 and ISO 's first acceptance of an international recommendation during 1967 caused ASCII 's choices for the national use characters to seem to be de facto standards for the world, causing confusion and incompatibility once other countries did begin to make their own assignments to these code points. ISO / IEC 646, like ASCII, is a 7 - bit character set. It does not make any additional codes available, so the same code points encoded different characters in different countries. Escape codes were defined to indicate which national variant applied to a piece of text, but they were rarely used, so it was often impossible to know what variant to work with and, therefore, which character a code represented, and in general, text - processing systems could cope with only one variant anyway. Because the bracket and brace characters of ASCII were assigned to `` national use '' code points that were used for accented letters in other national variants of ISO / IEC 646, a German, French, or Swedish, etc. programmer using their national variant of ISO / IEC 646, rather than ASCII, had to write, and thus read, something such as ä aÄiÜ = ' Ön ' ; ü instead of ( a ( i ) = ' \n ' ; ) C trigraphs were created to solve this problem for ANSI C, although their late introduction and inconsistent implementation in compilers limited their use. Many programmers kept their computers on US - ASCII, so plain - text in Swedish, German etc. ( for example, in e-mail or Usenet ) contained `` (, ) '' and similar variants in the middle of words, something those programmers got used to. For example, a Swedish programmer mailing another programmer asking if they should go for lunch, could get `` N ( jag har sm rg ) sar '' as the answer, which should be `` Nä jag har smörgåsar '' meaning `` No I 've got sandwiches ''. 8 - bit codes Main articles : Extended ASCII and ISO / IEC 8859 See also : UTF - 8 Eventually, as 8 -, 16 - and 32 - bit ( and later 64 - bit ) computers began to replace 12 -, 18 - and 36 - bit computers as the norm, it became common to use an 8 - bit byte to store each character in memory, providing an opportunity for extended, 8 - bit relatives of ASCII. In most cases these developed as true extensions of ASCII, leaving the original character - mapping intact, but adding additional character definitions after the first 128 ( i.e., 7 - bit ) characters. Encodings include ISCII ( India ), VISCII ( Vietnam ). Although these encodings are sometimes referred to as ASCII, true ASCII is defined strictly only by the ANSI standard. Most early home computer systems developed their own 8 - bit character sets containing line - drawing and game glyphs, and often filled in some or all of the control characters from 0 to 31 with more graphics. Kaypro CP / M computers used the `` upper '' 128 characters for the Greek alphabet. The PETSCII code Commodore International used for their 8 - bit systems is probably unique among post-1970 codes in being based on ASCII - 1963, instead of the more common ASCII - 1967, such as found on the ZX Spectrum computer. Atari 8 - bit computers and Galaksija computers also used ASCII variants. The IBM PC defined code page 437, which replaced the control characters with graphic symbols such as smiley faces, and mapped additional graphic characters to the upper 128 positions. Operating systems such as DOS supported these code pages, and manufacturers of IBM PCs supported them in hardware. Digital Equipment Corporation developed the Multinational Character Set ( DEC - MCS ) for use in the popular VT220 terminal as one of the first extensions designed more for international languages than for block graphics. The Macintosh defined Mac OS Roman and Postscript also defined a set, both of these contained both international letters and typographic punctuation marks instead of graphics, more like modern character sets. The ISO / IEC 8859 standard ( derived from the DEC - MCS ) finally provided a standard that most systems copied ( at least as accurately as they copied ASCII, but with many substitutions ). A popular further extension designed by Microsoft, Windows - 1252 ( often mislabeled as ISO - 8859 - 1 ), added the typographic punctuation marks needed for traditional text printing. ISO - 8859 - 1, Windows - 1252, and the original 7 - bit ASCII were the most common character encodings until 2008 when UTF - 8 became more common. ISO / IEC 4873 introduced 32 additional control codes defined in the 80 -- 9F hexadecimal range, as part of extending the 7 - bit ASCII encoding to become an 8 - bit system. Unicode Main articles : Unicode and ISO / IEC 10646 See also : Basic Latin ( Unicode block ) Unicode and the ISO / IEC 10646 Universal Character Set ( UCS ) have a much wider array of characters and their various encoding forms have begun to supplant ISO / IEC 8859 and ASCII rapidly in many environments. While ASCII is limited to 128 characters, Unicode and the UCS support more characters by separating the concepts of unique identification ( using natural numbers called code points ) and encoding ( to 8 -, 16 - or 32 - bit binary formats, called UTF - 8, UTF - 16 and UTF - 32 ). ASCII was incorporated into the Unicode ( 1991 ) character set as the first 128 symbols, so the 7 - bit ASCII characters have the same numeric codes in both sets. This allows UTF - 8 to be backward compatible with 7 - bit ASCII, as a UTF - 8 file containing only ASCII characters is identical to an ASCII file containing the same sequence of characters. Even more importantly, forward compatibility is ensured as software that recognizes only 7 - bit ASCII characters as special and does not alter bytes with the highest bit set ( as is often done to support 8 - bit ASCII extensions such as ISO - 8859 - 1 ) will preserve UTF - 8 data unchanged. See also Computing portal 3568 ASCII, an asteroid named after the character encoding Ascii85 ASCII art ASCII Ribbon Campaign Basic Latin ( Unicode block ) ( ASCII as a subset of Unicode ) Extended ASCII HTML decimal character rendering List of Unicode characters Jargon File, a glossary of computer programmer slang which includes a list of common slang names for ASCII characters List of computer character sets Alt codes Notes ^ Jump up to : The 128 characters of the 7 - bit ASCII character set are divided into eight 16 - character groups called sticks 0 -- 7, associated with the three most - significant bits. Depending on the horizontal or vertical representation of the character map, sticks correspond with either table rows or columns. Jump up ^ The Unicode characters from the area U + 2400 to U + 2421 reserved for representing control characters when it is necessary to print or display them rather than have them perform their intended function. Some browsers may not display these properly. Jump up ^ Caret notation is often used to represent control characters on a terminal. On most text terminals, holding down the Ctrl key while typing the second character will type the control character. Sometimes the shift key is not needed, for instance ^ @ may be typable with just Ctrl and 2. Jump up ^ Character escape sequences in C programming language and many other languages influenced by it, such as Java and Perl ( though not all implementations necessarily support all escape sequences ). Jump up ^ The Backspace character can also be entered by pressing the ← Backspace key on some systems. ^ Jump up to : The ambiguity of Backspace is due to early terminals designed assuming the main use of the keyboard would be to manually punch paper tape while not connected to a computer. To delete the previous character, one had to back up the paper tape punch, which for mechanical and simplicity reasons was a button on the punch itself and not the keyboard, then type the rubout character. They therefore placed a key producing rubout at the location used on typewriters for backspace. When systems used these terminals and provided command - line editing, they had to use the `` rubout '' code to perform a backspace, and often did not interpret the backspace character ( they might echo `` ^ H '' for backspace ). Other terminals not designed for paper tape made the key at this location produce Backspace, and systems designed for these used that character to back up. Since the delete code often produced a backspace effect, this also forced terminal manufacturers to make any Delete key produce something other than the Delete character. Jump up ^ The Tab character can also be entered by pressing the Tab ↹ key on most systems. Jump up ^ The Carriage Return character can also be entered by pressing the ↵ Enter or Return key on most systems. Jump up ^ The e escape sequence is not part of ISO C and many other language specifications. However, it is understood by several compilers, including GCC. Jump up ^ The Escape character can also be entered by pressing the Esc key on some systems. Jump up ^ ^ ^ means Ctrl + ^ ( pressing the `` Ctrl '' and caret keys ). Jump up ^ The Delete character can sometimes be entered by pressing the ← Backspace key on some systems. Jump up ^ Printed out, the characters are : ! `` # $ % & ' ( ) * +, -. / 0123456789 : ; < = > ? @ ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ ( ) ^ _ ` abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz ( ) ~ References ^ Jump up to : Mackenzie, Charles E. ( 1980 ). Coded Character Sets, History and Development ( PDF ). The Systems Programming Series ( 1 ed. ). Addison - Wesley Publishing Company, Inc. pp. 6, 166, 211, 215, 217, 220, 223, 228, 236 -- 238, 243 -- 245, 247 -- 253, 423, 425 -- 428, 435 -- 439. ISBN 0 - 201 - 14460 - 3. LCCN 77 - 90165. Archived ( PDF ) from the original on May 26, 2016. Jump up ^ Internet Assigned Numbers Authority ( IANA ) ( May 14, 2007 ). `` Character Sets ''. Accessed 2008 - 04 - 14. ^ Jump up to : Brandel, Mary ( July 6, 1999 ). `` 1963 : The Debut of ASCII ''. CNN. Retrieved 2008 - 04 - 14. ^ Jump up to : `` American Standard Code for Information Interchange, ASA X3. 4 - 1963 ''. American Standards Association ( ASA ). 1963 - 06 - 17. Retrieved 2018 - 01 - 11. ^ Jump up to : `` USA Standard Code for Information Interchange, USAS X3. 4 - 1967 ''. United States of America Standards Institute ( USASI ). July 7, 1967. Jump up ^ Jennings, Thomas Daniel ( 2016 - 04 - 20 ) ( 1999 ). `` An annotated history of some character codes or ASCII : American Standard Code for Information Infiltration ''. World Power Systems ( WPS ). Archived from the original on 2016 - 05 - 22. Retrieved 2016 - 05 - 22. ^ Jump up to : `` American National Standard for Information Systems -- Coded Character Sets -- 7 - Bit American National Standard Code for Information Interchange ( 7 - Bit ASCII ), ANSI X3. 4 - 1986 ''. American National Standards Institute ( ANSI ). March 26, 1986. Jump up ^ Shirley, R. ( August 2007 ), Internet Security Glossary, Version 2, RFC 4949, archived from the original on 2016 - 06 - 13, retrieved 2016 - 06 - 13 Jump up ^ Maini, Anil Kumar ( 2007 ). Digital Electronics : Principles, Devices and Applications. John Wiley and Sons. p. 28. ISBN 978 - 0 - 470 - 03214 - 5. In addition, it defines codes for 33 nonprinting, mostly obsolete control characters that affect how the text is processed. Jump up ^ Bukstein, Ed ( July 1964 ). `` Binary Computer Codes and ASCII ''. Electronics World. Ziff - Davis Publishing Company. 72 ( 1 ) : 28 -- 29. Retrieved 2016 - 05 - 22. ^ Jump up to : Bemer, Robert William ( 1980 ). `` Chapter 1 : Inside ASCII ''. General Purpose Software ( PDF ). Best of Interface Age. 2. Portland, OR, USA : dilithium Press. pp. 1 -- 50. ISBN 0 - 918398 - 37 - 1. LCCN 79 - 67462. Archived from the original on August 27, 2016. Retrieved August 27, 2016, from : Bemer, Robert William ( May 1978 ). `` Inside ASCII -- Part I ''. Interface Age. Portland, Oregon : dilithium Press. 3 ( 5 ) : 96 -- 102. Bemer, Robert William ( June 1978 ). `` Inside ASCII -- Part II ''. Interface Age. Portland, Oregon : dilithium Press. 3 ( 6 ) : 64 -- 74. Bemer, Robert William ( July 1978 ). `` Inside ASCII -- Part III ''. Interface Age. Portland, Oregon : dilithium Press. 3 ( 7 ) : 80 -- 87. Jump up ^ Brief Report : Meeting of CCITT Working Party on the New Telegraph Alphabet, May 13 -- 15, 1963. Jump up ^ Report of ISO / TC / 97 / SC 2 -- Meeting of October 29 -- 31, 1963. Jump up ^ Report on Task Group X3. 2.4, June 11, 1963, Pentagon Building, Washington, DC. Jump up ^ Report of Meeting No. 8, Task Group X3. 2.4, December 17 and 18, 1963 ^ Jump up to : Winter, Dik T. ( 2010 ) ( 2003 ). `` US and International standards : ASCII ''. Archived from the original on 2010 - 01 - 16. ^ Jump up to : Salste, Tuomas ( January 2016 ). `` 7 - bit character sets : Revisions of ASCII ''. Aivosto Oy. urn : nbn : fi - fe201201011004. Archived from the original on 2016 - 06 - 13. Retrieved 2016 - 06 - 13. Jump up ^ `` Information ''. Scientific American ( special edition ). 215 ( 3 ). September 1966. JSTOR e24931041. Jump up ^ Korpela, Jukka K. ( 2014 - 03 - 14 ) ( 2006 - 06 - 07 ). Unicode Explained -- Internationalize Documents, Programs, and Web Sites ( 2nd release of 1st ed. ). O'Reilly Media, Inc. p. 118. ISBN 978 - 0 - 596 - 10121 - 3. ISBN 0 - 596 - 10121 - X. Jump up ^ ANSI INCITS 4 - 1986 ( R2007 ) : American National Standard for Information Systems -- Coded Character Sets -- 7 - Bit American National Standard Code for Information Interchange ( 7 - Bit ASCII ) ( PDF ), 2007 ( 1986 ), archived ( PDF ) from the original on 2014 - 02 - 07, retrieved 2016 - 06 - 12 Jump up ^ Bit Sequencing of the American National Standard Code for Information Interchange in Serial - by - Bit Data Transmission, American National Standards Institute ( ANSI ), 1966, X3. 15 - 1966 Jump up ^ `` BruXy : Radio Teletype communication ''. 2005 - 10 - 10. Retrieved 2016 - 05 - 09. The transmitted code use International Telegraph Alphabet No. 2 ( ITA - 2 ) which was introduced by CCITT in 1924. ^ Jump up to : Smith, Gil ( 2001 ). `` Teletype Communication Codes '' ( PDF ). Baudot.net. Retrieved 2008 - 07 - 11. Jump up ^ Sawyer, Stanley A. ; Krantz, Steven George ( 1995 ). A TeX Primer for Scientists. CRC Press, LLC. p. 13. ISBN 978 - 0 - 8493 - 7159 - 2. Jump up ^ Savard, John J.G. `` Computer Keyboards ''. Retrieved 2014 - 08 - 24. Jump up ^ `` ASCIIbetical definition ''. PC Magazine. Retrieved 2008 - 04 - 14. Jump up ^ Resnick, P. ( April 2001 ), Internet Message Format, RFC 2822, archived from the original on 2016 - 06 - 13, retrieved 2016 - 06 - 13 ( NB. NO - WS - CTL. ) Jump up ^ McConnell, Robert ; Haynes, James ; Warren, Richard. `` Understanding ASCII Codes ''. Retrieved 2014 - 05 - 11. Jump up ^ Barry Margolin ( May 29, 2014 ). `` Re : editor and word processor history ( was : Re : RTF for emacs ) ''. help - gnu - emacs ( Mailing list ). ^ Jump up to : `` PDP - 6 Multiprogramming System Manual '' ( PDF ). Digital Equipment Corporation ( DEC ). 1965. p. 43. ^ Jump up to : `` PDP - 10 Reference Handbook, Book 3, Communicating with the Monitor '' ( PDF ). Digital Equipment Corporation ( DEC ). 1969. p. 5 - 5. Jump up ^ `` Help - GNU Emacs Manual ''. Jump up ^ Tim Paterson ( August 8, 2007 ). `` Is DOS a Rip - Off of CP / M ? ''. DosMan Drivel. Jump up ^ Ossanna, J.F. ; Saltzer, J.H. ( November 17 -- 19, 1970 ). `` Technical and human engineering problems in connecting terminals to a time - sharing system '' ( PDF ). Proceedings of the November 17 -- 19, 1970, Fall Joint Computer Conference ( FJCC ). p. 357 : AFIPS Press. pp. 355 -- 362. Using a `` new - line '' function ( combined carriage - return and line - feed ) is simpler for both man and machine than requiring both functions for starting a new line ; the American National Standard X3. 4 - 1968 permits the line - feed code to carry the new - line meaning. Jump up ^ O'Sullivan, T. ( 1971 - 05 - 19 ), TELNET Protocol, Internet Engineering Task Force ( IETF ), pp. 4 -- 5, RFC 158, archived from the original on 2016 - 06 - 13, retrieved 2013 - 01 - 28 Jump up ^ Neigus, Nancy J. ( 1973 - 08 - 12 ), File Transfer Protocol, Internet Engineering Task Force ( IETF ), RFC 542, archived from the original on 2016 - 06 - 13, retrieved 2013 - 01 - 28 Jump up ^ Postel, Jon ( June 1980 ), File Transfer Protocol, Internet Engineering Task Force ( IETF ), RFC 765, archived from the original on 2016 - 06 - 13, retrieved 2013 - 01 - 28 Jump up ^ `` EOL translation plan for Mercurial ''. Mercurial. Retrieved 2017 - 06 - 24. Jump up ^ Bernstein, Daniel J. `` Bare LFs in SMTP ''. Retrieved 2013 - 01 - 28. Jump up ^ CP / M 1.4 Interface Guide ( PDF ). Digital Research. 1978. p. 10. Jump up ^ Cerf, Vinton Gray ( 1969 - 10 - 16 ), ASCII format for Network Interchange, Network Working Group, RFC 20, archived from the original on 2016 - 06 - 13, retrieved 2016 - 06 - 13 ( NB. Almost identical wording to USAS X3. 4 - 1968 except for the intro. ) Jump up ^ Haynes, Jim ( 2015 - 01 - 13 ). `` First - Hand : Chad is Our Most Important Product : An Engineer 's Memory of Teletype Corporation ''. Engineering and Technology History Wiki ( ETHW ). Archived from the original on October 31, 2016. Retrieved 2016 - 10 - 31. There was the change from 1961 ASCII to 1968 ASCII. Some computer languages used characters in 1961 ASCII such as up arrow and left arrow. These characters disappeared from 1968 ASCII. We worked with Fred Mocking, who by now was in Sales at Teletype, on a type cylinder that would compromise the changing characters so that the meanings of 1961 ASCII were not totally lost. The underscore character was made rather wedge - shaped so it could also serve as a left arrow. Jump up ^ Bemer, Robert William. `` Bemer meets Europe ( Computer Standards ) -- Computer History Vignettes ''. Trailing-edge.com. Archived from the original on 2013 - 10 - 17. Retrieved 2008 - 04 - 14. ( NB. Bemer was employed at IBM at that time. ) Jump up ^ `` Robert William Bemer : Biography ''. 2013 - 03 - 09. Archived from the original on 2016 - 06 - 16. Jump up ^ Johnson, Lyndon Baines ( 1968 - 03 - 11 ). `` Memorandum Approving the Adoption by the Federal Government of a Standard Code for Information Interchange ''. The American Presidency Project. Retrieved 2008 - 04 - 14. Jump up ^ Richard S. Shuford ( December 20, 1996 ). `` Re : Early history of ASCII ? ''. Newsgroup : alt. folklore. computers. Usenet : Pine. SUN. 3.91. 961220100220.13180 C-100000@duncan.cs.utk.edu. Jump up ^ Folts, Harold C. ; Karp, Harry, eds. ( 1982 - 02 - 01 ). Compilation of Data Communications Standards ( 2nd revised ed. ). McGraw - Hill Inc. ISBN 0 - 07 - 021457 - 3. ISBN 978 - 0 - 07 - 021457 - 6. Jump up ^ Dubost, Karl ( 2008 - 05 - 06 ). `` UTF - 8 Growth on the Web ''. W3C Blog. World Wide Web Consortium. Archived from the original on 2016 - 06 - 16. Retrieved 2010 - 08 - 15. ^ Jump up to : Davis, Mark ( 2008 - 05 - 05 ). `` Moving to Unicode 5.1 ''. Official Google Blog. Google. Archived from the original on 2016 - 06 - 16. Retrieved 2010 - 08 - 15. Jump up ^ Davis, Mark ( 2010 - 01 - 28 ). `` Unicode nearing 50 % of the web ''. Official Google Blog. Google. Archived from the original on 2016 - 06 - 16. Retrieved 2010 - 08 - 15. Jump up ^ `` Specific Criteria '', attachment to memo from R.W. Reach, `` X3 - 2 Meeting -- September 14 and 15 '', September 18, 1961 Jump up ^ Maréchal, R. ( 1967 - 12 - 22 ), ISO / TC 97 -- Computers and Information Processing : Acceptance of Draft ISO Recommendation No. 1052 Jump up ^ The Unicode Consortium ( 2006 - 10 - 27 ). `` Chapter 13 : Special Areas and Format Characters '' ( PDF ). In Allen, Julie D. The Unicode standard, Version 5.0. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, US : Addison - Wesley Professional. p. 314. ISBN 0 - 321 - 48091 - 0. Retrieved 2015 - 03 - 13. Jump up ^ `` utf - 8 ( 7 ) -- Linux manual page ''. Man7.org. 2014 - 02 - 26. Retrieved 2014 - 04 - 21. Further reading Bemer, Robert William ( 1960 ). `` A Proposal for Character Code Compatibility ''. Communications of the ACM. 3 ( 2 ) : 71 -- 72. doi : 10.1145 / 366959.366961. Bemer, Robert William ( 2003 - 05 - 23 ). `` The Babel of Codes Prior to ASCII : The 1960 Survey of Coded Character Sets : The Reasons for ASCII ''. Archived from the original on 2013 - 10 - 17. Retrieved 2016 - 05 - 09, from : Bemer, Robert William ( December 1960 ). `` Survey of coded character representation ''. Communications of the ACM. 3 ( 12 ) : 639 -- 641. doi : 10.1145 / 367487.367493. Smith, H.J. ; Williams, F.A. ( December 1960 ). `` Survey of punched card codes ''. Communications of the ACM. 3 ( 12 ) : 642. doi : 10.1145 / 367487.367491. American National Standard Code for Information Interchange. American National Standards Institute. 1977. Robinson, G.S. ; Cargill, C. ( 1996 ). `` History and impact of computer standards ''. Computer. 29 ( 10 ) : 79 -- 85. doi : 10.1109 / 2.539725. Mullendore, Ralph Elvin ( 1964 ) ( 1963 ). Ptak, John F., ed. `` On the Early Development of ASCII -- The History of ASCII ''. JF Ptak Science Books ( published March 2012 ). Archived from the original on 2016 - 05 - 26. Retrieved 2016 - 05 - 26. External links Wikimedia Commons has media related to ASCII. `` C0 Controls and Basic Latin -- Range : 0000 -- 007F '' ( PDF ). The Unicode Standard 8.0. Unicode, Inc. 2015 ( 1991 ). Archived ( PDF ) from the original on 2016 - 05 - 26. Retrieved 2016 - 05 - 26. Fischer, Eric. `` The Evolution of Character Codes, 1874 -- 1968 ''. Retrieved 2016 - 05 - 26. ( 1 ) Character encodings Early telecommunications ASCII ISO / IEC 646 ISO / IEC 6937 T. 61 BCDIC Baudot code Morse code Telegraph code Wabun code Special telegraphy codes Non-Latin Chinese Cyrillic Needle telegraph codes ISO / IEC 8859 - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12 - 13 - 14 - 15 - 16 Bibliographic use ANSEL ISO 5426 / 5426 - 2 / 5427 / 5428 / 6438 / 6861 / 6862 / 10585 / 10586 / 10754 / 11822 MARC - 8 National standards ArmSCII BraSCII CNS 11643 ELOT 927 GOST 10859 GB 18030 HKSCS I.S. 434 ISCII JIS X 0201 JIS X 0208 JIS X 0212 JIS X 0213 KOI - 7 KPS 9566 KS X 1001 PASCII SI 960 TIS - 620 TSCII VISCII VSCII YUSCII EUC CN JP KR TW ISO / IEC 2022 CN JP KR CCCII MacOS code pages ( `` scripts '' ) Armenian Arabic Barents Cyrillic Celtic CentEuro ChineseSimp / EUC - CN ChineseTrad / Big5 Croatian Cyrillic Devanagari Dingbats Farsi ( Persian ) Gaelic Georgian Greek Gujarati Gurmukhi Hebrew Iceland Inuit Japanese / ShiftJIS Keyboard Korean / EUC - KR Latin ( Kermit ) Maltese / Esperanto Ogham / I.S. 434 Roman Romanian Sámi Symbol Thai / TIS - 620 Turkish Turkic Latin Turkic Cyrillic Ukrainian DOS code pages 100 111 112 113 151 152 161 162 163 164 165 166 210 220 301 437 449 489 620 667 668 707 708 709 710 711 714 715 720 721 737 768 770 771 772 773 774 775 776 777 778 790 850 851 852 853 854 855 / 872 856 857 858 859 860 861 862 863 864 / 17248 865 866 / 808 867 868 869 874 / 1161 / 1162 876 877 878 881 882 883 884 885 891 895 896 897 898 899 900 903 904 906 907 909 910 911 926 927 928 929 932 934 936 938 941 942 943 944 946 947 948 949 950 / 1370 951 966 991 1034 1039 1040 1041 1042 1043 1044 1046 1086 1088 1092 1093 1098 1108 1109 1114 1115 1116 1117 1118 1119 1125 / 848 1126 1127 1131 / 849 1139 1167 1168 1300 1351 1361 1362 1363 1372 1373 1374 1375 1380 1381 1385 1386 1391 1392 1393 1394 CWI - 2 Iran System Kamenický KOI8 Mazovia MIK IBM AIX code pages 367 371 806 813 819 895 896 912 913 914 915 916 919 920 921 / 901 922 / 902 923 952 953 954 955 956 957 958 959 960 961 963 964 965 970 971 1004 1006 1008 1009 1010 1011 1012 1013 1014 1015 1016 1017 1018 1019 1029 1036 1089 1111 1124 1129 / 1163 1133 1350 1382 1383 IBM Apple MacIntosh emulations 1275 1280 1281 1282 1283 1284 1285 1286 IBM Adobe emulations 1038 1276 1277 IBM DEC emulations 1020 1021 1023 1090 1100 1101 1102 1103 1104 1105 1106 1107 1287 1288 IBM HP emulations 1050 1051 1052 1053 1054 1055 1056 1057 1058 Windows code pages CER - GS 874 / 1162 ( TIS - 620 ) 932 / 943 ( Shift JIS ) 936 / 1386 ( GBK ) 950 / 1370 ( Big5 ) 949 / 1363 ( EUC - KR ) 1169 1174 Extended Latin - 8 1200 ( UTF - 16LE ) 1201 ( UTF - 16BE ) 1250 1251 1252 1253 1254 1255 1256 1257 1258 1259 1261 1270 54936 ( GB18030 ) EBCDIC code pages 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 / 1140 37 - 2 38 39 40 251 252 254 256 257 258 259 260 264 273 / 1141 274 275 276 277 / 1142 278 / 1143 279 280 / 1144 281 282 283 284 / 1145 285 / 1146 286 287 288 289 290 293 297 / 1147 298 300 310 320 321 322 330 351 352 353 355 357 358 359 360 361 363 382 383 384 385 386 387 388 389 390 391 392 393 394 395 410 420 / 16804 421 423 424 / 8616 / 12712 425 435 500 / 1148 803 829 833 834 835 836 837 838 / 838 839 870 / 1110 / 1153 871 / 1149 875 / 4971 / 9067 880 881 882 883 884 885 886 887 888 889 890 892 893 905 918 924 930 / 1390 931 933 / 1364 935 / 1388 937 / 1371 939 / 1399 1001 1002 1003 1005 1007 1024 1025 / 1154 1026 / 1155 1027 1028 1030 1031 1032 1033 1037 1047 1068 1069 1070 1071 1073 1074 1075 1076 1077 1078 1079 1080 1081 1082 1083 1084 1085 1087 1091 1097 1112 / 1156 1113 1122 / 1157 1123 / 1158 1130 / 1164 1132 1136 1137 1150 1151 1152 1159 1165 1166 1278 1279 1303 1364 1376 1377 JEF KEIS Platform specific Acorn Adobe Standard Adobe Latin 1 Apple II ATASCII Atari ST BICS Casio calculators CDC CPC DEC Radix - 50 DEC MCS / NRCS DG International ELWRO - Junior FIELDATA GEM GEOS GSM 03.38 HP Roman Extension HP Roman - 8 HP Roman - 9 HP FOCAL HP RPL LICS LMBCS Mattel Aquarius MSX NEC APC NeXT PCW PETSCII Sharp calculators TI calculators TRS - 80 Ventura International Ventura Symbol WISCII XCCS ZX80 ZX81 ZX Spectrum Unicode / ISO / IEC 10646 UTF - 1 UTF - 7 UTF - 8 UTF - 16 ( UTF - 16LE / UTF - 16BE ) / UCS - 2 UTF - 32 ( UTF - 32LE / UTF - 32BE ) / UCS - 4 UTF - EBCDIC GB 18030 BOCU - 1 CESU - 8 SCSU TeX typesetting system Cork LGR LY1 OML OMS OMX OT1 OT2 OT3 OT4 T2A T2B T2C T2D T3 T4 T5 TS1 TS3 U X2 Miscellaneous code pages ABICOMP APL ARIB STD - B24 HZ INIS INIS - 8 ISO - IR - 111 ISO - IR - 182 ISO - IR - 197 ISO - IR - 200 ISO - IR - 201 Johab SEASCII TACE16 TRON UTF - 5 UTF - 6 WTF - 8 Related topics Code page Control character ( C0 C1 ) CCSID Character encodings in HTML Charset detection Han unification Hardware ISO 6429 / IEC 6429 / ANSI X3. 64 Mojibake Character sets Retrieved from `` https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=ASCII&oldid=856262647 '' Categories : ASCII Computer - 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Question: how many characters are specified in ascii scheme
Answer: 128