ASCII characters are characters whose code points range from 0x00 to 0x7F. So, to encode any ASCII character in binary, we need at least 7 bits. In practice, an 8th bit is added and used as a parity bit to detect transmission errors. However, these 8 bits (1 byte) also allow us to represent a greater range of characters: those with code points in the range from 0x00 to 0xFF – also known as extended ASCII. This tool accepts any character from the extended ASCII character set.