Binary Glossary

Essential terms and definitions for understanding binary conversion and digital fundamentals.

This glossary covers key terms you'll encounter when learning about binary conversion, character encoding, and computer fundamentals. Understanding this vocabulary makes technical documentation and discussions more accessible.

ASCII

American Standard Code for Information Interchange. A character encoding standard that assigns numeric values (0-127) to text characters. Each ASCII character can be represented in 7 bits, though 8 bits (one byte) is conventional.

Binary

A base-2 number system using only two digits: 0 and 1. Computers use binary because electronic circuits easily distinguish between two states (on/off, high/low voltage).

Bit

The smallest unit of digital information, representing a single binary digit (0 or 1). The word "bit" is a contraction of "binary digit."

Byte

A group of 8 bits. One byte can represent 256 different values (2^8). In text encoding, each ASCII character typically occupies one byte.

Character Encoding

A system that assigns numeric codes to text characters. ASCII, UTF-8, and UTF-16 are common encoding standards.

Character Set

The complete collection of characters that an encoding system can represent. ASCII has 128 characters; Unicode has over 140,000.

Code Point

The numeric value assigned to a character in a character set. For example, the letter "A" has code point 65 in ASCII.

Decimal

The base-10 number system used in everyday counting, using digits 0-9. Also called "denary."

Delimiter

A character or sequence that separates data elements. In binary output, spaces or other characters may delimit individual bytes.

Digital

Information represented as discrete values (typically 0s and 1s), as opposed to analog continuous values.

Encoding

The process of converting information from one format to another. Text-to-binary conversion is a form of encoding, converting characters to their binary representation.

Decoding

The reverse of encoding - converting from a coded format back to the original. Binary-to-text conversion is decoding.

Extended ASCII

Extensions to the basic ASCII character set that use all 8 bits, allowing 256 characters. Various extended ASCII sets add international characters and symbols.

Hexadecimal

A base-16 number system using digits 0-9 and letters A-F. Often used as a more compact representation of binary (each hex digit equals 4 bits).

Kilobyte (KB)

A unit of digital information equal to 1,024 bytes (2^10 bytes). Sometimes defined as 1,000 bytes in certain contexts.

LSB (Least Significant Bit)

The rightmost bit in a binary number, representing the smallest value (2^0 = 1). Contrast with MSB.

MSB (Most Significant Bit)

The leftmost bit in a binary number, representing the largest value. In an 8-bit byte, the MSB represents 2^7 = 128.

Nibble

A group of 4 bits, representing half a byte. A nibble can hold values 0-15 and corresponds to one hexadecimal digit.

Octal

A base-8 number system using digits 0-7. Less common than hex but still used in some computing contexts.

Padding

Adding extra bits or characters to reach a required length. Binary strings may be padded with leading zeros to complete a byte.

Radix

The base of a number system. Binary has radix 2, decimal has radix 10, hexadecimal has radix 16.

Transistor

An electronic component that can act as a switch. Modern computers contain billions of transistors, each representing one bit.

Unicode

An international character encoding standard designed to represent text from all writing systems. Unicode assigns unique code points to over 140,000 characters.

UTF-8

A variable-width character encoding for Unicode. ASCII characters use 1 byte; other characters use 2-4 bytes. UTF-8 is backwards-compatible with ASCII.

UTF-16

A variable-width Unicode encoding using 2 or 4 bytes per character. Common in Windows and JavaScript internal strings.

Word

In computing, a unit of data processed by a CPU, typically 32 or 64 bits in modern systems. Not to be confused with text words.

Related Resources

For deeper understanding of these concepts: