character code: meaning, definition, pronunciation and examples

ASCII is a character code standard (defining numbers 0-127 for characters). When stored, its *encoding* is typically straightforward 7 or 8 bits per code, so the terms are often conflated for ASCII.

A character code (or code point) is the abstract number representing a character (e.g., 65 for 'A'). A character encoding (e.g., UTF-8, Windows-1252) is the concrete rule for translating that number into a sequence of bytes for storage or transmission.

Unicode is a standard that defines a very large set of character codes (code points) for almost all writing systems. It is not itself an encoding; UTF-8, UTF-16, and UTF-32 are Unicode encoding forms.

This often happens when a program uses the wrong assumption about the character encoding to interpret the byte data, leading to incorrect mapping back to character codes and thus wrong symbols being displayed.

A numerical representation or sequence of bits used to represent a specific character (letter, digit, punctuation mark, or symbol) within a computing or telecommunications system.

Character code is usually technical / academic in register.

Character code: in British English it is pronounced /ˈkærəktə kəʊd/, and in American English it is pronounced /ˈkɛrəktər koʊd/. Tap the audio buttons above to hear it.