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Learn: ASCII and Unicode
OCR GCSE J277 Computer Science specification
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Welcome!Today we'll explore ASCII and Unicode, ways computers represent text. Let's learn step by step how they work and why they’re important!
What is ASCII?ASCII stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange. It’s a character set used to represent letters, numbers, and symbols in binary so computers can understand them. ASCII uses 7 bits to represent up to 128 different characters, including the English alphabet, numbers, and some common symbols.
What does ASCII represent?
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What is Unicode?Unicode is a character set designed to represent characters from many different languages and symbols. Unlike ASCII, Unicode uses more bits, allowing it to represent thousands of characters from languages all over the world. It is essential for global communication in computing.
ASCII uses {{blank0}} bits, while Unicode uses {{blank1}} bits to represent characters.
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Why are ASCII and Unicode important?ASCII is useful for representing basic text and symbols, while Unicode allows computers to handle text from multiple languages and special symbols. Together, they ensure text data can be stored, shared, and displayed globally.
Match the items on the left with their correct pairs on the right
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How are ASCII and Unicode used?Both are used to assign a binary code to each character. For example, in ASCII, the letter 'A' is represented as 65 in decimal (or 01000001 in binary). Unicode expands this by including characters like 'æ' and '字', which can’t be represented in ASCII.
Which of the following is a key difference between ASCII and Unicode?
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Review Time!Great work! You've learned about ASCII and Unicode. Let's test your understanding now.
Which of the following are true about ASCII and Unicode? (Select all that apply)
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The letter 'A' is represented in ASCII as {{blank0}} in decimal and {{blank1}} in binary.
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Match the items on the left with their correct pairs on the right
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