ASCII

American  

[as-kee] / ˈæs ki /

noun

Computers.

1. American Standard Code for Information Interchange: a standard code, consisting of 128 7-bit combinations, for characters stored in a computer or to be transmitted between computers.

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ASCII British  

/ ˈæskiː /

acronym

1. American standard code for information interchange: a computer code for representing alphanumeric characters

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ASCII Scientific  

/ ăs′kē /

1. A code that assigns the numbers 0 through 127 to the letters of the alphabet, the digits 0 through 9, punctuation marks, and certain other characters. For example, the capital letter A is coded as 65 (binary 1000001). By standardizing the values used to represent written text, ASCII enables computers to exchange information. Basic, or standard, ASCII uses seven bits for each character code, giving it 2 ⁷, or 128, unique symbols. Various larger character sets, called extended ASCII, use eight bits for each character, yielding 128 additional codes numbered 128 to 255.

2. Compare Unicode

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ASCII Cultural  

1. An acronym for A merican S tandard C ode for I nformation I nterchange. Computers use this code to standardize communication between different machines.

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Etymology

Origin of ASCII

First recorded in 1960–65