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Lesson details

Key learning points

  1. In this lesson, we will look at character coding systems. First, we will consider character coding systems that you might have come across before, such as semaphore and Morse code, then we will be introduced to ASCII, a standard coding system for representing text. Next, we will learn about the need for Unicode to extend ASCII. Finally, we will learn how to work out the size of a plain text file.

Licence

This content is made available by Oak National Academy Limited and its partners and licensed under Oak’s terms & conditions (Collection 1), except where otherwise stated.

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3 Questions

Q1.
How many characters are in the ASCII character set?

Correct answer: 128
256
32
64

Q2.
How many bits of storage are used for each character?

2
4
6
Correct answer: 8

Q3.
What is the name for the character set that was introduced after ASCII and can hold thousands of characters?

Binary
Cyrillic
Hexadecimal
Correct answer: Unicode