Ascii Text to Binary Converter

In order to use this ascii text to binary converter tool, type an ascii value like "help" to get "01101000011001010110110001110000" and then hit the Convert button. This is the way you can convert up to 128 ascii text to binary characters.

ASCII Text

ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) is one of the most common character encoding standards. Originally developed from telegraphic codes, ASCII is now widely used in electronic communication for conveying text.

As computers can only understand numbers, the ASCII code represents text (characters) with different numbers. This is how a computer ‘understands’ and shows text.

The original ASCII is based on 128 characters. These are the 26 letters of the English alphabet (both in lower and upper cases); numbers from 0 to 9; and various punctuation marks. In the ASCII code, each of these characters are assigned a decimal number from 0 to 127. For example, the ASCII representation of upper case A is 65 and the lower case a is 97.

Hexadecimal System (Hex System)

The hexadecimal system (shortly hex), uses the number 16 as its base (radix). As a base-16 numeral system, it uses 16 symbols. These are the 10 decimal digits (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) and the first six letters of the English alphabet (A, B, C, D, E, F). The letters are used because of the need to represent the values 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15 each in one single symbol.

Hex is used in mathematics and information technologies as a more friendly way to represent binary numbers. Each hex digit represents four binary digits; therefore, hex is a language to write binary in an abbreviated form.

Four binary digits (also called nibbles) make up half a byte. This means one byte can carry binary values from 0000 0000 to 1111 1111. In hex, these can be represented in a friendlier fashion, ranging from 00 to FF.

In html programming, colors can be represented by a 6-digit hexadecimal number: FFFFFF represents white whereas 000000 represents black.

How to Convert ASCII Text to Binary

Converting ASCII texts to binary shows how a computer would interpret words. While online converters have rendered the job very easy, one can also do it by hand.

To convert from ASCII to Binary, two things are needed:

An ASCII table, which shows the decimal codes for 128 symbols (10 digits, 26 letters of the English alphabet both in lower and upper case, a number of punctuation marks and commands);
In addition, you should also know how to convert decimal numbers to binary numbers.

Here is how to convert ASCII text to binary step by step:

Step 1: Figure out what decimal numbers have been assigned to each letter and punctuation mark in the given word.
Step 2: Convert these decimal numbers to their binary equivalents. Don’t forget the punctuation marks.
Step 3: The binary string acquired at the end shows how a computer would interpret the given word.

Ascii Text to Binary Conversion Examples

Example 1: Wow!

Step 1: Notice that the first letter is upper case and there is an exclamation mark.
In the ASCII table, the capital letter W is assigned to the decimal number 87, 
o is assigned to 111, 
w to 119 and the exclamation mark is to 33.

Step 2: Convert the decimal numbers 87, 11, 77 and 33 to binary. 
Remember that the subtraction method might work faster.

For W:
87 = 64 + 16 + 4 + 2 + 1
2⁷ 	2⁶ 	2⁵ 	2⁴ 	2³ 	2² 	2¹ 	2⁰
128 	64 	32 	16 	8 	4	 2 	1
0 	1 	0 	1 	0 	1 	1 	1

For o:
111 = 64 + 32 + 8 + 4 + 2 +1
128	64	32	16	8	4	2	1
0	1 	1 	0 	1 	1 	1 	1

For w:
119 = 64 + 32 + 16 + 4 + 2 + 1
128	64	32	16	8	4	2	1
0	1	1	1	0	1	1	1

For !:
33 = 32 + 1
128	64	32	16	8	4	2	1
0	0	1	0	0	0	0	1

Step 3: Therefore, the word Wow! is converted to binary as follows:
01010111 01101111 01110111 00100001

Example 2: Love

For L:
76 = 64 + 8 + 4
128	64	32	16	8	4	2	1
0	1	0	0	1	1	0	0

For o:
111 = 64 + 32 + 8 + 4 + 2 +1
128	64	32	16	8	4	2	1
0	1	1	0	1	1	1	1

For v:
118 = 64 + 32 + 16 + 4 + 2
128	64	32	16	8	4	2	1
0	1	1	1	0	1	1	0

For e:
101 = 64 + 32 + 4 + 1
128	64	32	16	8	4	2	1
0	1	1	0	0	1	0	1

Therefore, the word Love is converted to binary as follows:
01001100 01101111 01110110 01100101

Ascii to Binary Conversion Table

Ascii	Hexadecimal	Binary
Space	20	00100000
!	21	00100001
"	22	00100010
#	23	00100011
$	24	00100100
%	25	00100101
&	26	00100110
'	27	00100111
(	28	00101000
)	29	00101001
*	2A	00101010
+	2B	00101011
,	2C	00101100
-	2D	00101101
.	2E	00101110
/	2F	00101111
0	30	00110000
1	31	00110001
2	32	00110010
3	33	00110011
4	34	00110100
5	35	00110101
6	36	00110110
7	37	00110111
8	38	00111000
9	39	00111001
:	3A	00111010
;	3B	00111011
<	3C	00111100
=	3D	00111101
>	3E	00111110
?	3F	00111111
@	40	01000000
A	41	01000001
B	42	01000010
C	43	01000011
D	44	01000100
E	45	01000101
F	46	01000110
G	47	01000111
H	48	01001000
I	49	01001001
J	4A	01001010
K	4B	01001011
L	4C	01001100
M	4D	01001101
N	4E	01001110
O	4F	01001111
P	50	01010000
Q	51	01010001
R	52	01010010
S	53	01010011
T	54	01010100
U	55	01010101
V	56	01010110
W	57	01010111
X	58	01011000
Y	59	01011001
Z	5A	01011010
[	5B	01011011
\	5C	01011100
]	5D	01011101
^	5E	01011110
_	5F	01011111
`	60	01100000
a	61	01100001
b	62	01100010
c	63	01100011
d	64	01100100
e	65	01100101
f	66	01100110
g	67	01100111
h	68	01101000
i	69	01101001
j	6A	01101010
k	6B	01101011
l	6C	01101100
m	6D	01101101
n	6E	01101110
o	6F	01101111
p	70	01110000
q	71	01110001
r	72	01110010
s	73	01110011
t	74	01110100
u	75	01110101
v	76	01110110
w	77	01110111
x	78	01111000
y	79	01111001
z	7A	01111010
{	7B	01111011
\|	7C	01111100
}	7D	01111101
~	7E	01111110
DEL	7F	01111111

Related converters: Binary To Ascii Text Converter

Also check the Binary Ascii Conversion Table how to convert ascii text to binary.