Character encoding
system using a prescribed set of digital values to represent textual characters
Character encoding is a convention of using a numeric value to represent each character of a writing script. Not only can a character set include natural language symbols, but it can also include codes that have meanings or functions outside of language, such as control characters and whitespace. Character encodings have also been defined for some constructed languages. When encoded, character data can be stored, transmitted, and transformed by a computer. The numerical values that make up a character encoding are known as code points and collectively comprise a code space or a code page.
Early character encodings that originated with optical or electrical telegraphy and in early computers could only represent a subset of the characters used in languages, sometimes restricted to upper case letters, numerals and limited punctuation. Over time, encodings capable of representing more characters were created, such as ASCII, ISO/IEC 8859, and Unicode encodings such as UTF-8 and UTF-16.
The most popular character encoding on the World Wide Web is UTF-8, which is used in 99.0% of surveyed web sites, as of September 2026. In application programs and operating system tasks, both UTF-8 and UTF-16 are popular options.
History
The history of character codes illustrates the evolving need for machine-mediated character-based symbolic information over a distance, using once-novel electrical means.
The public source identifies “Character encoding” as system using a prescribed set of digital values to represent textual characters. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Character, encoding and system.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q184759. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2026.
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This entry incorporates text from “Character encoding” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.