ASCII is a character encoding standard that provides how many different characters?

ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) is a standard character encoding system used to represent text in computers and communication devices. The original ASCII standard defines 128 different characters, making Option D the correct answer.
The ASCII character set includes... Read More

1 BASIC COMPUTER MCQS

ASCII is a character encoding standard that provides how many different characters?

  • 256 different characters
  • 2560 different characters
  • 234 different characters
  • 128 different characters
Correct Answer: D. 128 different characters

Detailed Explanation

ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) is a standard character encoding system used to represent text in computers and communication devices. The original ASCII standard defines 128 different characters, making Option D the correct answer.


The ASCII character set includes uppercase and lowercase English letters (A–Z, a–z), digits (0–9), punctuation marks, mathematical symbols, and control characters such as Enter, Tab, Backspace, and Line Feed. Each character is represented by a unique 7-bit binary code, allowing a total of 128 (2⁷) different character combinations.


Many people confuse Standard ASCII with Extended ASCII. Standard ASCII contains 128 characters, while Extended ASCII uses 8 bits and supports 256 characters by adding extra symbols, accented letters, and graphical characters. However, when an MCQ simply asks about ASCII, it refers to the original 7-bit ASCII standard, whose character set contains 128 characters.


Key Point:



  • ASCII: American Standard Code for Information Interchange. ✅

  • Standard ASCII: 7-bit character encoding.

  • Total Characters: 128

  • Extended ASCII: 8-bit encoding with 256 characters.


Exam Tip: Remember the simple rule:



  • ASCII = 7 bits = 128 characters

  • Extended ASCII = 8 bits = 256 characters

Discussion

No comments yet. Be the first to share your thoughts!

Leave a Comment

More from Basic Computer MCQs