ASCII
 
The American Standard Code for Information
Interchange (ASCII) is a code for exchanging text
among computers and programs. The standard ASCII
character set corresponds to standard keyboard
characters. You can use the extended ASCII
character set to insert special characters in
documents. To insert a special character, turn on
NumLock, then hold down Alt and type the numeric
code for that character, using the numbers on the
numeric keypad.
 
An ASCII file is a text-only file; it has no
formatting.