ASCII Table

Back to Tech Stuff

Decimal	Octal	Hex	Binary	Value
000	000	000	00000000	NUL (Null char.)
001	001	001	00000001	SOH (Start of Header)
002	002	002	00000010	STX (Start of Text)
003	003	003	00000011	ETX (End of Text)
004	004	004	00000100	EOT (End of Transmission)
005	005	005	00000101	ENQ (Enquiry)
006	006	006	00000110	ACK (Acknowledgment)
007	007	007	00000111	BEL (Bell)
008	010	008	00001000	BS (Backspace)
009	011	009	00001001	HT (Horizontal Tab)
010	012	00A	00001010	LF (Line Feed)
011	013	00B	00001011	VT (Vertical Tab)
012	014	00C	00001100	FF (Form Feed)
013	015	00D	00001101	CR (Carriage Return)
014	016	00E	00001110	SO (Shift Out)
015	017	00F	00001111	SI (Shift In)
016	020	010	00010000	DLE (Data Link Escape)
017	021	011	00010001	DC1 (XON) (Device Control 1)
018	022	012	00010010	DC2 (Device Control 2)
019	023	013	00010011	DC3 (XOFF)(Device Control 3)
020	024	014	00010100	DC4 (Device Control 4)
021	025	015	00010101	NAK (Negative Acknowledgement)
022	026	016	00010110	SYN (Synchronous Idle)
023	027	017	00010111	ETB (End of Trans. Block)
024	030	018	00011000	CAN (Cancel)
025	031	019	00011001	EM (End of Medium)
026	032	01A	00011010	SUB (Substitute)
027	033	01B	00011011	ESC (Escape)
028	034	01C	00011100	FS (File Separator)
029	035	01D	00011101	GS (Group Separator)
030	036	01E	00011110	RS (Request to Send)(Record Separator)
031	037	01F	00011111	US (Unit Separator)
032	040	020	00100000	SP (Space)
033	041	021	00100001	! (exclamation mark)
034	042	022	00100010	" (double quote)
035	043	023	00100011	# (number sign)
036	044	024	00100100	$ (dollar sign)
037	045	025	00100101	% (percent)
038	046	026	00100110	& (ampersand)
039	047	027	00100111	' (single quote)
040	050	028	00101000	( (left/opening parenthesis)
041	051	029	00101001	) (right/closing parenthesis)
042	052	02A	00101010	* (asterisk)
043	053	02B	00101011	+ (plus)
044	054	02C	00101100	, (comma)
045	055	02D	00101101	- (minus or dash)
046	056	02E	00101110	. (dot)
047	057	02F	00101111	/ (forward slash)
048	060	030	00110000	0
049	061	031	00110001	1
050	062	032	00110010	2
051	063	033	00110011	3
052	064	034	00110100	4
053	065	035	00110101	5
054	066	036	00110110	6
055	067	037	00110111	7
056	070	038	00111000	8
057	071	039	00111001	9
058	072	03A	00111010	: (colon)
059	073	03B	00111011	; (semi-colon)
060	074	03C	00111100	< (less than)
061	075	03D	00111101	= (equal sign)
062	076	03E	00111110	> (greater than)
063	077	03F	00111111	? (question mark)
064	100	040	01000000	@ (AT symbol)
065	101	041	01000001	A
066	102	042	01000010	B
067	103	043	01000011	C
068	104	044	01000100	D
069	105	045	01000101	E
070	106	046	01000110	F
071	107	047	01000111	G
072	110	048	01001000	H
073	111	049	01001001	I
074	112	04A	01001010	J
075	113	04B	01001011	K
076	114	04C	01001100	L
077	115	04D	01001101	M
078	116	04E	01001110	N
079	117	04F	01001111	O
080	120	050	01010000	P
081	121	051	01010001	Q
082	122	052	01010010	R
083	123	053	01010011	S
084	124	054	01010100	T
085	125	055	01010101	U
086	126	056	01010110	V
087	127	057	01010111	W
088	130	058	01011000	X
089	131	059	01011001	Y
090	132	05A	01011010	Z
091	133	05B	01011011	[ (left/opening bracket)
092	134	05C	01011100	\ (back slash)
093	135	05D	01011101	] (right/closing bracket)
094	136	05E	01011110	^ (caret/circumflex)
095	137	05F	01011111	_ (underscore)
096	140	060	01100000	`
097	141	061	01100001	a
098	142	062	01100010	b
099	143	063	01100011	c
100	144	064	01100100	d
101	145	065	01100101	e
102	146	066	01100110	f
103	147	067	01100111	g
104	150	068	01101000	h
105	151	069	01101001	i
106	152	06A	01101010	j
107	153	06B	01101011	k
108	154	06C	01101100	l
109	155	06D	01101101	m
110	156	06E	01101110	n
111	157	06F	01101111	o
112	160	070	01110000	p
113	161	071	01110001	q
114	162	072	01110010	r
115	163	073	01110011	s
116	164	074	01110100	t
117	165	075	01110101	u
118	166	076	01110110	v
119	167	077	01110111	w
120	170	078	01111000	x
121	171	079	01111001	y
122	172	07A	01111010	z
123	173	07B	01111011	{ (left/opening brace)
124	174	07C	01111100	\| (vertical bar)
125	175	07D	01111101	} (right/closing brace)
126	176	07E	01111110	~ (tilde)
127	177	07F	01111111	DEL (delete)

The original character set of the Internet is ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange), the characters you can find on the keyboard of a standard American computer or typewriter. Even today, most information is transmitted over the Internet in the form of ASCII characters, with each character being encoded with a number in the range from 1 to 127. In HTML, the language of the Web, this encoding is represented as &#xxx; with the x's standing for the character's code number. Thus, the letter "a" can be encoded as a, the letter "A" as A, and the figure bracket "{" as {.

It was not difficult to extend this notation from ASCII to the characters used by most Western European languages, resulting in the "Latin-1" character set (also known as the ISO-8859-1 or, somewhat erroneously, as the "extended ASCII" character set). Whereas there are 127 possible 7-bit ASCII characters, the 8-bit Latin-1 encoding allows 255 characters to be represented. Latin-1 includes, in addition to the regular ASCII characters, non-English letters such as the "é" (é) and "ñ" (ñ), some special symbols, such as the bullet (•) encoded as •, the section sign (§), encoded as § and others. Most of the "extended ASCII" characters also have a named form, which is easier to remember than the numeric form. For example, "é" can be used in a Web page as either é or é, "ñ" as ñ or ñ, and "§" as § or §. All the major Web browsers support both forms of encoding.

Most languages of the world, however, are not restricted to the ISO-8859-1 character set. Hungarian, for example, has the characters ő, Ő, and Ű; Czech has ů and ř, Romanian has ţ and other characters, which are not part of Latin-1. Then there are characters of alphabets other than our Roman alphabet, such as Cyrillic (Кириллица), Hebrew, Arabic and others. Over the years, several forms of encoding have been devised for these characters either by replacing some of the 255 Latin-1 characters by others or by using a completely different 8-bit or 16-bit encoding. Some examples of these character sets are given in the table below.

iso-8859-1 or CP-1252 or Latin-1	Western European
iso-8859-2 or CP-1250 or Latin-2	Eastern European
iso-8859-3	Esperanto, Galician, Maltese, Turkish
iso-8859-4	Scandinavian, Baltic
iso-8859-5	Cyrillic
iso-8859-6	Arabic
iso-8859-7or CP-1253	Greek
iso-8859-8	Hebrew
GB2312	Simplified Chinese
Big5	Traditional Chinese
Shift_JIS, EUC-JP	Japanese
KOI8-R	Russian
ISO-2022-KR, EUC-KR	Korean

The Web author has two options to make sure the characters of the page will be displayed as intended:

Convert each character to the proper code (either manually, using code tables, or automatically, using appropriate word processing or Web authoring software).
Use the special characters unencoded and instead tell the browser how to interpret them.

If the latter option is selected, a meta tag containing the "charset" (character set) attribute is inserted in the header of the Web page.