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ASCII was the first character set (encoding standard) used between computers on the Internet.
Both ISO-8859-1 (default in HTML 4.01) and UTF-8 (default in HTML5), are built on ASCII.
The ASCII Character Set
ASCII stands for the "American Standard Code for Information Interchange".
It was designed in the early 60's, as a standard character set for computers and electronic devices.
ASCII is a 7-bit character set containing 128 characters.
It contains the numbers from 0-9, the upper and lower case English letters from A to Z, and some special characters.
The character sets used in modern computers, in HTML, and on the Internet, are all based on ASCII.
The following tables list the 128 ASCII characters and their equivalent number.
ASCII Printable Characters
| Char | Number | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 0 - 31 | Control characters (see below) | |
| 32 | space | |
| ! | 33 | exclamation mark |
| " | 34 | quotation mark |
| # | 35 | number sign |
| $ | 36 | dollar sign |
| % | 37 | percent sign |
| & | 38 | ampersand |
| ' | 39 | apostrophe |
| ( | 40 | left parenthesis |
| ) | 41 | right parenthesis |
| * | 42 | asterisk |
| + | 43 | plus sign |
| , | 44 | comma |
| - | 45 | hyphen |
| . | 46 | period |
| / | 47 | slash |
| 0 | 48 | digit 0 |
| 1 | 49 | digit 1 |
| 2 | 50 | digit 2 |
| 3 | 51 | digit 3 |
| 4 | 52 | digit 4 |
| 5 | 53 | digit 5 |
| 6 | 54 | digit 6 |
| 7 | 55 | digit 7 |
| 8 | 56 | digit 8 |
| 9 | 57 | digit 9 |
| : | 58 | colon |
| ; | 59 | semicolon |
| < | 60 | less-than |
| = | 61 | equals-to |
| > | 62 | greater-than |
| ? | 63 | question mark |
| @ | 64 | at sign |
| A | 65 | uppercase A |
| B | 66 | uppercase B |
| C | 67 | uppercase C |
| D | 68 | uppercase D |
| E | 69 | uppercase E |
| F | 70 | uppercase F |
| G | 71 | uppercase G |
| H | 72 | uppercase H |
| I | 73 | uppercase I |
| J | 74 | uppercase J |
| K | 75 | uppercase K |
| L | 76 | uppercase L |
| M | 77 | uppercase M |
| N | 78 | uppercase N |
| O | 79 | uppercase O |
| P | 80 | uppercase P |
| Q | 81 | uppercase Q |
| R | 82 | uppercase R |
| S | 83 | uppercase S |
| T | 84 | uppercase T |
| U | 85 | uppercase U |
| V | 86 | uppercase V |
| W | 87 | uppercase W |
| X | 88 | uppercase X |
| Y | 89 | uppercase Y |
| Z | 90 | uppercase Z |
| [ | 91 | left square bracket |
| \ | 92 | backslash |
| ] | 93 | right square bracket |
| ^ | 94 | caret |
| _ | 95 | underscore |
| ` | 96 | grave accent |
| a | 97 | lowercase a |
| b | 98 | lowercase b |
| c | 99 | lowercase c |
| d | 100 | lowercase d |
| e | 101 | lowercase e |
| f | 102 | lowercase f |
| g | 103 | lowercase g |
| h | 104 | lowercase h |
| i | 105 | lowercase i |
| j | 106 | lowercase j |
| k | 107 | lowercase k |
| l | 108 | lowercase l |
| m | 109 | lowercase m |
| n | 110 | lowercase n |
| o | 111 | lowercase o |
| p | 112 | lowercase p |
| q | 113 | lowercase q |
| r | 114 | lowercase r |
| s | 115 | lowercase s |
| t | 116 | lowercase t |
| u | 117 | lowercase u |
| v | 118 | lowercase v |
| w | 119 | lowercase w |
| x | 120 | lowercase x |
| y | 121 | lowercase y |
| z | 122 | lowercase z |
| { | 123 | left curly brace |
| | | 124 | vertical bar |
| } | 125 | right curly brace |
| ~ | 126 | tilde |
ASCII Device Control Characters
The ASCII control characters (range 00-31, plus 127) were designed to control hardware devices.
Control characters (except horizontal tab, line feed, and carriage return) have nothing to do inside an HTML document.
| Char | Number | Description |
|---|---|---|
| NUL | 00 | null character |
| SOH | 01 | start of header |
| STX | 02 | start of text |
| ETX | 03 | end of text |
| EOT | 04 | end of transmission |
| ENQ | 05 | enquiry |
| ACK | 06 | acknowledge |
| BEL | 07 | bell (ring) |
| BS | 08 | backspace |
| HT | 09 | horizontal tab |
| LF | 10 | line feed |
| VT | 11 | vertical tab |
| FF | 12 | form feed |
| CR | 13 | carriage return |
| SO | 14 | shift out |
| SI | 15 | shift in |
| DLE | 16 | data link escape |
| DC1 | 17 | device control 1 |
| DC2 | 18 | device control 2 |
| DC3 | 19 | device control 3 |
| DC4 | 20 | device control 4 |
| NAK | 21 | negative acknowledge |
| SYN | 22 | synchronize |
| ETB | 23 | end transmission block |
| CAN | 24 | cancel |
| EM | 25 | end of medium |
| SUB | 26 | substitute |
| ESC | 27 | escape |
| FS | 28 | file separator |
| GS | 29 | group separator |
| RS | 30 | record separator |
| US | 31 | unit separator |
| DEL | 127 | delete (rubout) |
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