This page features a collection of ASCII artwork. ASCII (ask'-ee) stands for "American Standard Code for Information Interchange." This standard was developed by the American National Standards Institute. It's basically a table of numbers and their corresponding symbols. We all know that the only things computers send back and forth to each other are zeros and ones. Using ASCII as a standard, a computer can send a series of zeros and ones in a certain order and the other computer will know that it signifies a certain letter of the alphabet. ASCII covers letters, numbers, and certain control codes. It doesn't cover graphics. Essentially, ASCII artwork denotes artwork that is created without using graphics at all. Its palette is limited to the symbols and characters that you have available to you on your computer keyboard. It started back in the old days of computers. Most computers didn't even display graphics. So, people got creative with text and ASCII Artwork was born! Some say ASCII art is dead, but if it were, this site wouldn't receive 20,000-27,000 hits per month.