ASCII

Short for American Standard Code for Information Interexchange, ASCII is an industry standard, which assigns letters, numbers and other characters within the 256 slots available in the 8-bit code.

The ASCII table is divided in 3 sections:
Non printable, system codes between 0 and 31.
Lower ASCII, between 32 and 127. This part of the table (as shown below) originates from older, American systems, which worked on 7-bit character tables. Foreign letters, like and were not available then.
Higher ASCII, between 128 and 255. This part is programmable, in that you can exchange characters based on language you want to write in. Foreign letters are placed in this part and an example is shown below.

Standard aka Lower ASCII characters and codesDec Char Dec Char Dec Char Dec Char Dec Char Dec Char
33 ! 49 1 65 A 81 Q 97 a 113 q
34 " 50 2 66 B 82 R 98 b 114 r
35 # 51 3 67 C 83 S 99 c 115 s
36 $ 52 4 68 D 84 T 100 d 116 t
37 % 53 5 69 E 85 U 101 e 117 u
38 & 54 6 70 F 86 V 102 f 118 v
39 ' 55 7 71 G 87 W 103 g 119 w
40 ( 56 8 72 H 88 X 104 h 120 x
41 ) 57 9 73 I 89 Y 105 i 121 y
42 * 58 : 74 J 90 Z 106 j 122 z
43 + 59 ; 75 K 91 [ 107 k 123 {
44 , 60 < 76 L 92 \ 108 l 124 | 45 - 61 = 77 M 93 ] 109 m 125 } 46 . 62 > 78 N 94 ^ 110 n 126 ~
47 / 63 ? 79 O 95 _ 111 o 127 _
48 0 64 @ 80 P 96 ` 112 p


Extended ASCII uses eight instead of seven bits, which adds 128 additional characters. This gives extended ASCII the ability for extra characters, such as special symbols, foreign language letters, and drawing characters