Text Encoding Converter

Text encoding is how computers store and represent text characters as numbers. Different encodings support different character sets. UTF-8 supports all Unicode characters, while ASCII only supports basic Latin characters. Understanding encoding is crucial for handling international text and avoiding character corruption.

UTF-8 uses 1-4 bytes per character and is backward compatible with ASCII. UTF-16 uses 2-4 bytes per character. UTF-8 is more efficient for text with mostly ASCII characters, while UTF-16 can be more efficient for texts with many non-ASCII characters.

ASCII should only be used when you need compatibility with very old systems or when you are certain your text contains only basic Latin characters (A-Z, a-z, 0-9, and basic punctuation). ASCII cannot represent accented characters, emojis, or non-Latin scripts.

ISO-8859-1, also known as Latin-1, extends ASCII to include Western European characters with accents. It uses 1 byte per character and can represent 256 different characters. It is commonly used in legacy systems but has been largely superseded by UTF-8.

Encoding errors occur when you try to convert text containing characters that are not supported by the target encoding. For example, emojis cannot be represented in ASCII or Latin-1. Always check if your text is compatible with the intended encoding before conversion.

Byte representations show how each character is stored in computer memory for that encoding. This is useful for debugging encoding issues, understanding file sizes, and when working with binary data or low-level programming.

Base64 encoding converts binary data (including text) into ASCII characters using 64 printable characters. It is commonly used for embedding binary data in text formats like email or JSON. Base64 encoded text is about 33% larger than the original.

URL encoding (percent-encoding) converts characters that have special meaning in URLs into a safe format. Special characters are replaced with % followed by their hexadecimal representation. This ensures URLs work correctly regardless of the characters they contain.

HTML entity encoding converts special characters into HTML-safe representations. Use it when displaying user-generated content in HTML to prevent XSS attacks and ensure proper display of special characters like <, >, &, and quotes.

Yes, most encodings are reversible. However, this tool focuses on converting FROM text TO various encodings. To decode Base64, URL-encoded, or HTML entities back to text, use the specific decoder tools available on the platform for better functionality.

Use UTF-8 for modern applications as it supports all characters and is widely compatible. Use ASCII only for simple English text in legacy systems. Use URL encoding for web parameters, Base64 for binary data in text formats, and HTML entities for displaying user content safely in web pages.

Emojis and special Unicode characters work perfectly with UTF-8 and UTF-16 encodings. They cannot be represented in ASCII or Latin-1 and will cause conversion errors. In HTML entity encoding, they are converted to numeric character references (e.g., &#128512; for 😀).