Which character encoding system is used for worldwide interchange of text, processing, and display?

Which character encoding system is used for worldwide interchange of text, processing, and display?

• A. ASCII
• B. Unicode
• C. UTF-8
• D. ISO-8859-1

Answer: (B)

A universal character set that lets text be represented consistently across different systems and cultures. Unicode provides a single set of code points for characters from virtually every language, plus symbols and emojis, so text can be stored, processed, and displayed in the same way no matter where it originates. It defines what each character means and how it should be interpreted, which is why it’s used for global text interchange. ASCII is limited to 128 characters, mainly English letters and control codes, so it can’t represent many languages. ISO-8859-1 extends ASCII to 256 characters but still covers only Western European scripts. UTF-8 is a popular encoding form for Unicode that converts the code points into bytes, and it’s widely used for data transfer, but UTF-8 is an encoding scheme, not the universal character set itself. That distinction is why Unicode is the best answer here.

A universal character set that lets text be represented consistently across different systems and cultures. Unicode provides a single set of code points for characters from virtually every language, plus symbols and emojis, so text can be stored, processed, and displayed in the same way no matter where it originates. It defines what each character means and how it should be interpreted, which is why it’s used for global text interchange.

ASCII is limited to 128 characters, mainly English letters and control codes, so it can’t represent many languages. ISO-8859-1 extends ASCII to 256 characters but still covers only Western European scripts. UTF-8 is a popular encoding form for Unicode that converts the code points into bytes, and it’s widely used for data transfer, but UTF-8 is an encoding scheme, not the universal character set itself. That distinction is why Unicode is the best answer here.