What does ASCII stand for?

ASCII stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange. It is a character encoding standard that is used to represent text in computers and other devices that use text. Each character in the ASCII set is represented by a numerical value which allows computers to communicate and process text efficiently. ASCII includes definitions for 128 characters, encompassing letters, digits, punctuation marks, and control characters. This standardization has been crucial in ensuring compatibility and consistency in data exchange across different systems and platforms, making it foundational for modern computing and programming.