How many bits are used to encode a character according to the ASCII encoding scheme?

Question

2 bits
(ex: 10 encodes ‘A’)

4 bits
(ex: 1011 encodes ‘A’)

6 bits
(ex: 10 0110 encodes ‘A’)

8 bits
(ex: 0100 0001 encodes ‘A’)

Answer 1

ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) uses 7 bits to encode a character. However, it is commonly represented with an additional bit (making it 8 bits) for storage or transmission purposes, particularly in modern computer systems.

For example, the character ‘A’ in ASCII is represented as:

• 7 bits: 1000001
• 8 bits (with an additional leading zero): 01000001

So, while the pure ASCII encoding scheme uses 7 bits, the common representation in most systems is 8 bits. Hence, the correct answer from the options you provided is:

8 bits (ex: 0100 0001 encodes ‘A’).