American Standard Code for Information Interchange

World-wide standard for the code numbers assigned to each key on the keyboard. ASCII text does not include formatting and therefore can be exchanged and read by most computer systems.

American Standard Code for Information Interchange computer character set (text and symbols) that enables transfer of text and data between different computing systems. This international standard provides only very plain text without options for font modifications. For example, files from word processors such as Microsoft Word, Word Perfect, and Word Star often cannot be imported to hypertext or hypermedia software without conversion to ASCII code (most word processors will change files to ASCII "text" files). The downside is that nearly all formatting and font variations are lost in ASCII conversions such that imported ASCII text may have to be re-formatted line by line and altered for font preferences. Very few software alternatives have "filters" that import word processor files directly without having to convert to ASCII codes, although many are now adding rich-text format (RTF) utilities. In hypertext authoring, choice of a hypertext software option should include a question concerning whether "filters" are available for avoidance of ASCII text conversions. (See alsoANSI , Internet Messaging , and Rich-text format )

A standard character-to-number encoding widely used in the computer industry. See also: EBCDIC.