Which encoding uses eight bits per character with one bit used for error checking?

Which encoding uses eight bits per character with one bit used for error checking?

• A. ASCII: American Standard Code for Information Interchange
• B. Unicode
• C. EBCDIC
• D. UTF-8

Answer: (A)

Think about how an encoding can include a simple check for errors. ASCII is the 7-bit code for basic characters, and on many systems an extra bit is added to make eight bits per character. That extra bit can serve as a parity bit to catch simple transmission errors, giving you an eight-bit representation with one error-check bit. The others don’t match this description as precisely: Unicode and UTF-8 are designed to handle a vast range of characters and use variable-length encoding rather than a fixed eight-bit-per-character scheme with a dedicated parity bit. EBCDIC is an eight-bit encoding used on IBM systems, but it isn’t defined by using a parity bit for error checking in its standard form.

Think about how an encoding can include a simple check for errors. ASCII is the 7-bit code for basic characters, and on many systems an extra bit is added to make eight bits per character. That extra bit can serve as a parity bit to catch simple transmission errors, giving you an eight-bit representation with one error-check bit.

The others don’t match this description as precisely: Unicode and UTF-8 are designed to handle a vast range of characters and use variable-length encoding rather than a fixed eight-bit-per-character scheme with a dedicated parity bit. EBCDIC is an eight-bit encoding used on IBM systems, but it isn’t defined by using a parity bit for error checking in its standard form.