ASCII Characters
Publishing work relies on the ability to understand and handle correctly the structure of the text. This entails a variety of skills, among others the knowledge how computers understand the text in its digitalised form. In other words, knowing the knitty-gritty details of character encoding might be a vital skill in producing a good book.
ASCII characters are a table of all possible characters used in text representation. These characters can be divided into classes. Some are printable, i.e. we can see them printed. They consist of numbers, letters, and punctuation ("4", "a", "A", "&"). Other ASCII codes represent control characters. They are not visible or printable as is, but they influence the text structure, control the data stream in printers, or can even emit a sound.
The shortened table of ASCII codes is below. For a consise overview of character encoding (including a whole ASCII table), history introduction, and information on the current usage of various coding schemes (such as UTF-8) see an article written by Bryan Innes.
Table of selected ASCII characters
|
ASCII Code |
Symbol |
Name of the Sign |
|
ALT + 0128 |
€ |
Euro |
|
ALT + 0130 |
‚ |
Quotation mark / Left single (low-9) |
|
ALT + 0131 |
ƒ |
Small letter f with hook |
|
ALT + 0132 |
„ |
Quotation mark / Left double (low-99) |
|
ALT + 0133 |
… |
Ellipsis |
|
ALT + 0134 |
† |
Dagger |
|
ALT + 0135 |
‡ |
Double dagger |
|
ALT + 0136 |
ˆ |
Modifier / Accent circumflex |
|
ALT + 0137 |
‰ |
Per mille |
|
ALT + 0145 |
‘ |
Quotation mark / Left single |
|
ALT + 0146 |
’ |
Quotation mark / Right single |
|
ALT + 0147 |
“ |
Quotation mark / Left double |
|
ALT + 0148 |
” |
Quotation mark / Right double |
|
ALT + 0149 |
• |
Bullet |
|
ALT + 0150 |
– |
En dash (en = "n") |
|
ALT + 0151 |
— |
Em dash (em = "m") |
|
ALT + 0152 |
˜ |
Tilde / Small |
|
ALT + 0153 |
™ |
Trade mark sign |
|
ALT + 0155 |
› |
Single right-pointing angle quotation mark |
|
ALT + 0160 |
|
Non-breaking space ("nbsp") |
|
ALT + 0162 |
¢ |
Cent sign |
|
ALT + 0163 |
Ł |
Pound sign |
|
ALT + 0164 |
¤ |
Currency sign |
|
ALT + 0165 |
¥ |
Yen sign |
|
ALT + 0166 |
¦ |
Pipe, Broken vertical bar |
|
ALT + 0167 |
§ |
Section sign |
|
ALT + 0169 |
© |
Copyright sign |
|
ALT + 0171 |
« |
Double angle quotes / Left |
|
ALT + 0172 |
¬ |
Not sign |
|
ALT + 0174 |
® |
Registered sign |
|
ALT + 0176 |
° |
Degree sign |
|
ALT + 0177 |
± |
Plus-or-minus |
|
ALT + 0178 |
² |
Superscript 2 squared |
|
ALT + 0179 |
³ |
Superscript 3 cubed |
|
ALT + 0180 |
´ |
Accent / Acute |
|
ALT + 0181 |
µ |
Micro sign |
|
ALT + 0182 |
¶ |
Paragraph sign |
|
ALT + 0183 |
· |
Middle dot |
|
ALT + 0185 |
¹ |
Superscript 1 |
|
ALT + 0187 |
» |
Double angle quotes / Right |
|
ALT + 0188 |
¼ |
Fraction ¼ |
|
ALT + 0189 |
½ |
Fraction ½ |
|
ALT + 0190 |
¾ |
Fraction ¾ |
|
ALT + 0197 |
Å |
Ångström (Scandinavian Å) |
|
ALT + 0215 |
× |
Multiplication sign (…times) |
|
ALT + 0216 |
Ø |
Capital letter O with slash |
|
ALT + 0230 |
æ |
Small letter ae |
|
ALT + 0231 |
ç |
Small letter c with cedilla |
|
ALT + 0247 |
÷ |
Division sign |