ASCII encoding and art: standard, history and uses

What is ASCII?

ASCII stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange. It assigns numbers to letters, digits, punctuation and controls. ASCII art arranges printable characters into a picture.

Open the image converter or browse generated examples.

The 7-bit range

• Seven bits encode 128 values: decimal 0-127, hexadecimal 00-7F.
• In an 8-bit byte, ASCII occupies the low seven bits with the high bit zero.
• The printable range is 32-126: 95 characters including space. Space advances the position without drawing a mark.
• Values 0-31 are controls, such as tab (9), line feed (10), carriage return (13) and escape (27).
• DEL is 127 (0x7F), outside the printable range. Unicode classifies it as a control, not a drawing character.

For the code table and byte representation, see RFC 20. The Unicode Basic Latin chart lists the corresponding characters and controls.

ASCII, extended encodings and Unicode

"Extended ASCII" is an informal name for different 8-bit encodings, not a single extra character set. Code pages such as CP437 and Windows-1252 assign different meanings above 127. Selecting the wrong encoding can change the displayed text.

Unicode includes ASCII as U+0000 through U+007F. UTF-8 encodes those values as the same single bytes, so ASCII text is also valid UTF-8. Other characters can require several bytes. See RFC 3629.

Blocks, box-drawing lines and emoji in this app are Unicode text, not strict ASCII. Use Standard, Simple, Binary or Detailed with only printable ASCII symbols when that distinction matters. UTF-8 support does not guarantee that a font contains every glyph.

A historical reference

RFC 20, published in October 1969, describes ASCII for network interchange and reproduces the 1968 code table. It documents text encoding, not the invention date of ASCII art. Text art uses that limited palette to suggest outlines and shading; today this app generates those character grids from images or FIGlet font definitions.

Using text art in a project

Copy and TXT preserve characters, spaces and line breaks, not the receiving app's styling. Use a fenced code block in a README or chat, or a preformatted monospace text area. Keep leading/trailing spaces and disable wrapping. Unicode blocks, lines and emoji need suitable fonts and may occupy different widths.

A programming language, file format or terminal may use ASCII symbols for syntax while also accepting Unicode text. Git diffs do not require ASCII-only source files. Check the receiving tool's encoding and font rather than treating ASCII as a universal requirement.

For conversion settings, follow the image tutorial. For banners, read the FIGlet guide. The algorithm explanation covers how this converter selects characters.

Frequently asked questions