Correct option is D
Each ASCII character is represented using 8 bits, or 1 byte. The ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) encoding system uses 7 bits to represent 128 different characters, including letters, digits, punctuation marks, and control characters. The 8th bit is often used for error checking or extended characters in some implementations, but the basic ASCII character set uses 7 bits.
Important Key Points:
1. 1 Byte: An ASCII character is typically stored in 1 byte (8 bits).
2. Character Representation: The 7 bits in the ASCII encoding allow for 128 characters, and the 8th bit is often used for extensions.
3. Universal Standard: ASCII is widely used for representing text in computers, with each character taking up 8 bits of storage.
Knowledge Booster:
· 4 bits: This is not correct. 4 bits would only represent 16 characters, which is insufficient for the full range of ASCII characters.
· 16 bits: This is incorrect as 16 bits would allow for 65,536 different characters, which is more than the standard ASCII set requires.
· 5 bits: This is incorrect. 5 bits would only allow for 32 characters, which is far too few for the ASCII character set.