ASCII, the acronym for the "American Standard Code for Information Interchange" is the first character-encoding scheme used between computers on the Internet.
Modern character encoding schemes like UTF-8 and ISO-8859 are built on ASCII.
The ASCII Character Set
ASCII Character Set was designed in the '60s, as a standard character set for computers and hardware devices, such as printers and tape drives.
Originally ASCII is based on the English alphabet, and it's a 7-bit character set containing 128 characters: the numbers 0-9, uppercase and lowercase English letters from A to Z, some basic punctuation symbols and some special characters.
The character sets used in modern computers, HTML, and Internet are all based on ASCII.
Below, you can find table lists that contain 128 ASCII characters and their equivalent HTML entity codes
ASCII Printable Characters
| ASCII Character | HTML Entity Code | Description |
|---|---|---|
|   | space | |
| ! | ! | exclamation mark |
| " | " | quotation mark |
| # | # | number sign |
| $ | $ | dollar sign |
| % | % | percent sign |
| & | & | ampersand |
| ' | ' | apostrophe |
| ( | ( | left parenthesis |
| ) | ) | right parenthesis |
| * | * | asterisk |
| + | + | plus sign |
| , | , | comma |
| - | - | hyphen |
| . | . | period |
| / | / | slash |
| 0 | 0 | digit 0 |
| 1 | 1 | digit 1 |
| 2 | 2 | digit 2 |
| 3 | 3 | digit 3 |
| 4 | 4 | digit 4 |
| 5 | 5 | digit 5 |
| 6 | 6 | digit 6 |
| 7 | 7 | digit 7 |
| 8 | 8 | digit 8 |
| 9 | 9 | digit 9 |
| : | : | colon |
| ; | ; | semicolon |
| < | < | less-than |
| = | = | equals-to |
| > | > | greater-than |
| ? | ? | question mark |
| @ | @ | at sign |
| A | A | uppercase A |
| B | B | uppercase B |
| C | C | uppercase C |
| D | D | uppercase D |
| E | E | uppercase E |
| F | F | uppercase F |
| G | G | uppercase G |
| H | H | uppercase H |
| I | I | uppercase I |
| J | J | uppercase J |
| K | K | uppercase K |
| L | L | uppercase L |
| M | M | uppercase M |
| N | N | uppercase N |
| O | O | uppercase O |
| P | P | uppercase P |
| Q | Q | uppercase Q |
| R | R | uppercase R |
| S | S | uppercase S |
| T | T | uppercase T |
| U | U | uppercase U |
| V | V | uppercase V |
| W | W | uppercase W |
| X | X | uppercase X |
| Y | Y | uppercase Y |
| Z | Z | uppercase Z |
| [ | [ | left square bracket |
| \ | \ | backslash |
| ] | ] | right square bracket |
| ^ | ^ | caret |
| _ | _ | underscore |
| ` | ` | grave accent |
| a | a | lowercase a |
| b | b | lowercase b |
| c | c | lowercase c |
| d | d | lowercase d |
| e | e | lowercase e |
| f | f | lowercase f |
| g | g | lowercase g |
| h | h | lowercase h |
| i | i | lowercase i |
| j | j | lowercase j |
| k | k | lowercase k |
| l | l | lowercase l |
| m | m | lowercase m |
| n | n | lowercase n |
| o | o | lowercase o |
| p | p | lowercase p |
| q | q | lowercase q |
| r | r | lowercase r |
| s | s | lowercase s |
| t | t | lowercase t |
| u | u | lowercase u |
| v | v | lowercase v |
| w | w | lowercase w |
| x | x | lowercase x |
| y | y | lowercase y |
| z | z | lowercase z |
| { | { | left curly brace |
| | | | | vertical bar |
| } | } | right curly brace |
| ~ | ~ | tilde |
ASCII Device Control Characters
The ASCII device control characters (except horizontal tab, line feed, and carriage return) have nothing to do inside an HTML document. Originally ASCII control characters (range 00-31, plus 127) were designed to control hardware devices.
| ASCII Character | HTML Entity Code | Description |
|---|---|---|
| NUL | � | null character |
| SOH |  | start of header |
| STX |  | start of text |
| ETX |  | end of text |
| EOT |  | end of transmission |
| ENQ |  | enquiry |
| ACK |  | acknowledge |
| BEL |  | bell (ring) |
| BS |  | backspace |
| HT | 	 | horizontal tab |
| LF | | line feed |
| VT |  | vertical tab |
| FF |  | form feed |
| CR | | carriage return |
| SO |  | shift out |
| SI |  | shift in |
| DLE |  | data link escape |
| DC1 |  | device control 1 |
| DC2 |  | device control 2 |
| DC3 |  | device control 3 |
| DC4 |  | device control 4 |
| NAK |  | negative acknowledge |
| SYN |  | synchronize |
| ETB |  | end transmission block |
| CAN |  | cancel |
| EM |  | end of medium |
| SUB |  | substitute |
| ESC |  | escape |
| FS |  | file separator |
| GS |  | group separator |
| RS |  | record separator |
| US |  | unit separator |
| DEL |  | delete (rubout) |
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