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What is ASCII?

ASCII , or American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard developed in the 1960s. Initially created for use in teletypewriters and teleprinters, the standard encodes 128 characters into seven-bit integers, where 95 are fully printable and the rest are control codes. Upon its development ASCII art was a way of creating imagery using the 95 printable characters. This technique allowed PC users to form images in digital documents that, unlike embedding actual image files, used significantly less processing power.

With the creation of PC's, ASCII art extended from the usual 7-bit that the original ASCII standard used, into 8-bit, now employing special graphical characters unique to the IBM PC and MS DOS. The art style using the 8-bit system was nick-named the "Block ASCII".

ASCII has various forms:

Single Line Art

̿' ̿'\̵͇̿̿\з=(◕_◕)=ε/̵͇̿̿/'̿'̿ ̿ (ಠ_ಠ) ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) °º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸,ø¤°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸ ┏(-_-)┛┗(-_- )┓

As the name suggests, this type of art takes up only one line on a page. The art style employs symbols and lines, as well as sometimes incorporating foreign letters. Most often, single line art is used in the form of emoticons, such as the side-ways 'smileys' used in the west, as well as the Japanese 'kaomoji' (face characters) that led to the development of modern-day emojis.

Typewriter Lettering

The creation of large lettering using regular letters in combination. This type of art takes up multiple lines on a page and has typically been used at the very top of a page in the form of the page logo/name.

W     W  AA  TTTTTT EEEE RRRR  M   M EEEE L     OOO  N   N 
W     W A  A   TT   E    R   R MM MM E    L    O   O NN  N 
W  W  W AAAA   TT   EEE  RRRR  M M M EEE  L    O   O N N N 
 W W W  A  A   TT   E    R R   M   M E    L    O   O N  NN 
  W W   A  A   TT   EEEE R  RR M   M EEEE LLLL  OOO  N   N 
    

"Oldskool"/"Amiga" style

This art style primarily uses line characters such as: _/\-+=.()<>: It was primarily used as logos or titles for web pages and rose to popularity in the 90's.

 __        __   ________  _________  _______   ________  _____ ______   _______   ___       ________  ________      
|\  \     |\  \|\   __  \|\___   ___\\  ___ \ |\   __  \|\   _ \  _   \|\  ___ \ |\  \     |\   __  \|\   ___  \    
\ \  \    \ \  \ \  \|\  \|___ \  \_\ \   __/|\ \  \|\  \ \  \\\__\ \  \ \   __/|\ \  \    \ \  \|\  \ \  \\ \  \   
 \ \  \  __\ \  \ \   __  \   \ \  \ \ \  \_|/_\ \   _  _\ \  \\|__| \  \ \  \_|/_\ \  \    \ \  \\\  \ \  \\ \  \  
  \ \  \|\__\_\  \ \  \ \  \   \ \  \ \ \  \_|\ \ \  \\  \\ \  \    \ \  \ \  \_|\ \ \  \____\ \  \\\  \ \  \\ \  \ 
   \ \____________\ \__\ \__\   \ \__\ \ \_______\ \__\\ _\\ \__\    \ \__\ \_______\ \_______\ \_______\ \__\\ \__\
    \|____________|\|__|\|__|    \|__|  \|_______|\|__|\|__|\|__|     \|__|\|_______|\|_______|\|_______|\|__| \|__|                                                                                                           
    

Image to text conversion

Some programmes allow users to convert existing images into ascii art. This is done through a process called vector quantization, whereby an image is made grayscale with less than 8-bit precision and then each character is assigned a value according to the palette.

Original Image = left; Conversion = right.