This paragraph was added to the start of the article:
- Unicode is a standard used in computer software for encoding human readable characters in digital form.
The most common encoding is the
ASCII code, which can encode a maximum of 127 characters, which is enough for the English language. As computer use spread to other languages, the shortcomings of ASCII became more and more apparent. There are many other languages with many other characters; Asian languages in particular contain many, many characters.
I removed it because it is inaccurate (Unicode isn't a standard; it's a consortium that produces lots of
standards), confusing (its mention of ASCII is not clearly historical), and adds no information that isn't
already in the article.
I assume, however, that it was added because someone thought the existing first paragraph was unclear, so
I'm open to suggestions about how to improve it. --Lee Daniel Crocker