ASCII is a simple code that computers agreed on long ago so that the letter A, the number 7, a space, and so on mean the same thing from one machine to another. Each character gets a number. It only covers a small set: English letters, digits, and a few symbols — not Chinese, not emoji. Later systems grew from this idea and can hold many more scripts. People say it as a word, “ASK-ee”, not as five letters. You still meet it in file names, old formats, and ASCII art (pictures made from typed characters). It is a tool for machines to share text, not a language people speak.