Character Set: Differences

The ASCII Character Set

  • ASCII uses the values from 0 to 31 (and 127) for control characters.
  • ASCII uses the values from 32 to 126 for letters, digits, and symbols.
  • ASCII does not use the values from 128 to 255.

The ANSI Character Set (Windows-1252)

  • ANSI is identical to ASCII for the values from 0 to 127.
  • ANSI has a proprietary set of characters for the values from 128 to 159.
  • ANSI is identical to UTF-8 for the values from 160 to 255.

The ISO-8859-1 Character Set

  • 8859-1 is identical to ASCII for the values from 0 to 127.
  • 8859-1 does not use the values from 128 to 159.
  • 8859-1 is identical to UTF-8 for the values from 160 to 255.

The UTF-8 Character Set

  • UTF-8 is identical to ASCII for the values from 0 to 127.
  • UTF-8 does not use the values from 128 to 159.
  • UTF-8 is identical to both ANSI and 8859-1 for the values from 160 to 255.
  • UTF-8 continues from the value 256 with more than 10 000 different characters.

If this is too confusing, don't worry about it because it won't affect your webmastering! The point is, you want to use UTF-8 in your meta tag -- always.

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