ASCII to HTML Conversion Table: Complete (& PDF File)

The complete ASCII to HTML conversion table.

This ASCII to HTML table contains all 256 ASCII characters and their HTML counterparts.

So if you want to get the complete ASCII to HTML conversion table, then this article is for you.

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ASCII to HTML Conversion Table: Complete (PDF File)

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What Is ASCII in a Nutshell?

Have you ever stopped to wonder how your computer works?

You may know that computers use binary (combinations of the numbers zero and one) to store information, but how does that translate into the comprehensive text you read on your screen?

The answer lies with ASCII.

ASCII Explained

ASCII stands for the American Standard Code for Information Interchange. Essentially, it is the computer’s own language.

Computers have a seven-digit code to represent each letter, number, and punctuation. This code is binary, so it only uses a combination of zeros and ones.

For example, the bits (binary digits) for a capital A are 01000001, while the bits for a lowercase A are 01100001.

If you counted how many digits there are, you might be confused about why there are eight digits instead of seven.

Well, each byte in the standard ASCII starts with zero, so the following seven digits are those that differentiate the characters.

ASCII has codes for 255 characters.

Instead of remembering the byte for each letter, symbol, and number, the founders organized them numerically and assigned them a decimal value.

For example, capital A (as mentioned above) is number 65, while the lowercase A is 97.

ASCII Sections

To further organize these codes, the founders separated the characters into two sections, which later became three as people developed codes for more specialized characters.

Professional programmers cooperating in developing a program.

The first ASCII section is a control group that contains unprintable characters.

There are a total of 32 characters in this subgroup, labeled from 0 to 31.

These unprintable numbers are only to control different external devices, like a keyboard or a printer.

In the next section, you’ll find the printable characters that occupy spaces 32 to 127.

Any character you see on the keyboard will be in this group, from the % symbol to the letters and numbers.

Even the spacebar and the delete key have their own codes (numbers 32 and 127, respectively).

The final section, ranging from character code 128 to 255, was a more recent addition.

Every code has eight bits, each starting with one (as opposed to zero as in the previous two sections).

The characters in this section vary depending on the particular operating system language you are using. Many foreign characters (like Á and Ö) fall into this category.

History of ASCII

Sixty years ago, a conversation about creating a unified coding system for all types of characters began.

The first meeting of the American Standard’s Association’s subcommittee X3.2 occurred in October 1960, and the members started with a teleprinter code from the Bell company.

From there, they published the first version in 1963, which only had numbers and capital letters. In 1967, they added the first section of control characters and lowercase letters.

Fourteen years later, they implemented the extension group. This third section includes characters from 128 to 255.

The majority of computing systems still use ASCII, but new variations are becoming popular with specific systems.

Using the ASCII

Whether you’ve realized it or not, you already use ASCII! Just using a computer system utilizes the ASCII.

Nevertheless, it’s helpful to learn and understand ASCII—even if you aren’t interested in the technical details – so you can quickly get a foreign language letter whenever you need it.

For example, with Windows, you can press the ALT key and the given code to get any particular character.

Instead of copying and pasting those accented letters or unique currency signs, you can use this quick method not to break the flow of your typing.

Variations of ASCII

Since the ASCII contains mainly American characters, several variations with non-English letters developed around the world.

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) created the third section of the ASCII, including eight-bit codes.

The extension, called the ISO 8859, has numerous language variations.

Western European languages: Latin-1
Eastern European and non-Cyrillic central languages: Latin-2
Esperanto and southern European languages: Latin-3
Northern European languages: Originally Latin-4, now called Latin-10 or Latin-6
Turkish: Latin-5
Cyrillic: 8859-5
Arabic: 8859-6
Greek: 8859-7
Hebrew: 8859-8

The numerous names for the code for northern European languages show that the information interchange code is continually changing as people develop more efficient systems.

A fantastic example of these continual changes is the creation of Unicode.

The Universal Coded Character Set aims to provide a completely comprehensive code set for all characters.

There are currently 143,859 characters, including historical scripts and emojis.

Thanks to its goal of including thousands of characters, it has become a popular choice for computer software.

Learn every little tiny bit about ASCII in this in depth article about ASCII: What Is ASCII & What Is ASCII Used For?

What Is HTML in a Nutshell?

Hypertext Markup Language, better known as HTML, is a standardized system for tagging text files to determine a specific graphic, color, font, or hyperlink effect.

Put simply; this means that HTML is a formatting language. T

oday, there are three main markup languages, including HTML (described here), XML, and XHTML.

By learning basic HTML, you gain more control over the look of your web pages.

Learning HTML is like learning how to insert an image or text box in Word or another word processing program.

What HTML Is Not

HTML is not a programming language. A programming language is used for automating or programming a computer or machine with different algorithms.

Instead, HTML is a markup language.

This means it cannot create dynamic functionality.

Instead, it works to format and organize documents. Essentially, it makes things more presentable.

The Origin of HTML

Tim Berners-Lee invented HTML. He worked as a physicist at a Switzerland based research institute.

He is the one that came up with the idea of a hypertext system used on the internet.

Hypertext refers to text that includes references (i.e., links) to different texts that people can access immediately.

He created and published the first version of HTML in 1991, and at this time, it contained 18 HTML tags.

Since that time, each new version of HTML introduced new attributes and tags to the markup language.

Today, there are 140 HTML tags, but some are already obsolete and not supported by today’s browsers.

Because of how quickly HTML grew in popularity, it is now thought of as the web standard. HTML specifications are created and maintained by W3C or the World Wide Web Consortium.

The biggest update made to HTML was in 2017, when HTML5 was introduced. It added a few new semantic tags to this markup that reveals the meaning of the content, such as <footer>, <header>, and <article>.

HTML Behind the Scenes

HTML document files end with the .htm or .html extension.

You can see them using any web browser, such as Mozilla Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome, etc.

The browser you use reads the HTML file and creates the content so online users can read what it says.

Most websites include a few HTML pages.

For example, the site’s home page, contact page, and about page all have unique HTML documents.

Every page of HTML includes tags, which are called elements.

You can refer to these as the foundation of your web page because they create a hierarchy that structures other content into headings, paragraphs, content blocks, and sections.

Usually, HTML elements begin and end with the <tag> </tag> syntax.