Class: XI
Chapter: Data Representation
Topic : Encoding Schemes
Encoding: Encoding means converting data into a specific format to be efficiently stored and
processed by a computer.
• Computers use binary (0s and 1s) to represent data.
• To store text, numbers, images, and sounds, we need encoding schemes that
convert this data into binary.
Common Encoding Schemes:
Encoding Scheme Bits Used Description
ASCII 7 bits Represents 128 English characters.
Extended ASCII 8 bits 256 characters, including special symbols.
ISCII 8 bits Indian Script Code for Information Interchange.
Unicode 8, 16, 32 bits Universal encoding for all scripts/languages
UTF-8 Variable (8-32) A popular Unicode format, used in web pages.
bits
ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange)
• Uses 7 bits (128 values: 0–127)
• Only supports English alphabets, digits, and common symbols.
Example:
Character Decimal
A 65
Z 90
a 96
z 122
0 48
9 57
ISCII (Indian Script Code for Information Interchange)
• Developed in India to represent Indian languages like Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, etc.
• Uses 8 bits (supports 256 characters).
• Allows switching between Indian scripts using a script selection code.
• ISCII is backward-compatible with ASCII.
• It was an important step before India adopted Unicode for Indian scripts.
Unicode
• A universal standard that represents all languages and symbols.
• Characters are represented using unique code points like U+0905 (for अ in Hindi).
• Supports over 1 lakh characters.
Variants of Unicode:
• UTF-8 – Most commonly used (1 to 4 bytes)
• UTF-16 – 2 or 4 bytes
• UTF-32 – Fixed 4 bytes