Pronounced ask-ee, ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) is a code for representing English characters as numbers, with each letter assigned a number from 0 to 127. For example, the ASCII code for uppercase M is 77. Most computers use ASCII codes to represent text, which makes it possible to transfer data from one computer to another. 

Here are some of the more commonly used characters and their ASCII equivalents. To use a character just copy and paste the ASCII symbol into the formatting of your Web page at the spot where you want the character to show up.

ASCII Generator
Generate a ASCII graphic from a word or text with more than 130 fonts.

History of ASCII
This document is about character codes, specifically a history of ASCII(1), the American Standard Code for Information Interchange , and its immediate ancestors; FIELDATA, ITA2, Murray's telegraphy code, Baudot's telegraphy code, and Morse's telegraphy code, and involves some forensic bitology.