Special Character
Special Character
A special character is a character not found on a standard keyboard, such as accented letters or mathematical symbols, and is typically entered using a character map or keyboard shortcut.
It adds variety and depth to text, making it more expressive and engaging.
What does Special Character mean?
A special character, also known as a non-printing character, is a character that is not a Letter, number, or punctuation mark. Special characters are often used to format text, such as spaces, tabs, and carriage returns. They can also be used to represent special symbols, such as the Copyright symbol (©) or the trademark symbol (™).
Special characters are typically represented by their Unicode code point. For example, the space character is represented by the code point U+0020. The tab character is represented by the code point U+0009. The carriage return character is represented by the code point U+000D.
Special characters are an important part of the ASCII Character set, which is the standard character set used by computers. ASCII defines 128 special characters, including the space character, the tab character, and the carriage return character.
Applications
Special characters are used in a wide variety of applications, including:
- Text formatting: Special characters are used to format text, such as spaces, tabs, and carriage returns. They can also be used to create special effects, such as indents and bullets.
- Data representation: Special characters can be used to represent data, such as the copyright symbol (©) or the trademark symbol (™). They can also be used to represent special values, such as the null value (NULL).
- Programming: Special characters are used in programming to represent special commands or operators. For example, the semicolon (;) is used to terminate statements in many programming languages.
History
The history of special characters dates back to the early days of computing. The first computers used a simple character set that included only letters, numbers, and punctuation marks. As computers became more sophisticated, the need for a more comprehensive character set emerged.
In the 1960s, the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) developed the ASCII character set. ASCII defined 128 special characters, including the space character, the tab character, and the carriage return character. ASCII became the standard character set for computers, and it is still widely used today.
In the 1990s, the Unicode Consortium developed the Unicode character set. Unicode is a universal character set that includes characters from all major languages. Unicode defines over 1 million characters, including many special characters. Unicode is now the standard character set for computers, and it is used by most modern operating systems and applications.