Unicode

Unicode is a universal character encoding standard. It defines the way individual characters are represented in text files, web pages, and other types of documents.

Unlike ASCII, which was designed to represent only basic English characters, Unicode was designed to support characters from all languages around the world. The standard ASCII character set only supports 128 characters, while Unicode can support roughly 1,000,000 characters. While ASCII only uses one byte to represent each character, Unicode supports up to 4 bytes for each character.

There are several different types of Unicode encodings, though UTF-8 and UTF-16 are the most common. UTF-8 has become the standard character encoding used on the Web and is also the default encoding used by many software programs. While UTF-8 supports up to four bytes per character, it would be inefficient to use four bytes to represent frequently used characters. Therefore, UTF-8 uses only one byte to represent common English characters. European (Latin), Hebrew, and Arabic characters are represented with two bytes, while three bytes are used to Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and other Asian characters. Additional Unicode characters can be represented with four bytes.

Updated April 20, 2012 by Per C.

quizTest Your Knowledge

What is an individual letter, number, or symbol in a font called?

A
Ligature
0%
B
Serif
0%
C
Pilcrow
0%
D
Glyph
0%
Correct! Incorrect!     View the Glyph definition.
More Quizzes →

The Tech Terms Computer Dictionary

The definition of Unicode on this page is an original definition written by the TechTerms.com team. If you would like to reference this page or cite this definition, please use the green citation links above.

The goal of TechTerms.com is to explain computer terminology in a way that is easy to understand. We strive for simplicity and accuracy with every definition we publish. If you have feedback about this definition or would like to suggest a new technical term, please contact us.

Sign up for the free TechTerms Newsletter

How often would you like to receive an email?

You can unsubscribe or change your frequency setting at any time using the links available in each email.

Questions? Please contact us.