Computers do not “know” or “use” English or any other human language. Used at the very core of the operating system is a language comprised of 1s and 0s called bits. At the beginning and for a while afterwards, computer programmers wrote their programs in bits. Subsequently the convenience of being able to communicate with the computer in human languages rather than bits was recognized and a computer program (computer programs are sometime called “codes”) was developed to convert English characters into 0s and 1s that the computer could understand.

ASCII is a 7-bit character set in which each character is defined by a unique combination of 1s and 0s. Every letter in English and most Roman languages is represented by an ASCII code. When you write in a text editor such as Notepad^© for Windows^©, the letters you type are converted to ASCII before they are sent to the computer processor.

Notepad^© Files
Programs such as as Notepad^© for Windows^© is a program that write standard text that the computer sees as text. These programs are not as complicated as Programs like Word^© for Windows^© and the look and feel of the text cannot be changed. Using a program such as Notepad^© for Windows^©, you are writing, essentially, ASCII text, which is unformatted letters that the computer reads. On the PC, Notepad files are written with the .TXT extension.

Word^© Documents
Word documents and documents written by other word processors are more complicated. You have the option to change the look and feel of your text, such as the font color and face, the leading of the lines, paragraph and line breaks, and much more. You can even embed graphics into Word documents. When you write a Word^© document, you are writing text with code embedded in the document. These hidden codes tell the computer where you want your font to change color, how to embed the graphic, and what font face to use for the entire document.

Last updated: 10 June, 2011
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