ASCII (Which stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange) is the set of standard printable characters that you can get off your keyboard. Plain text files are made of characters like this. Email can only send ascii (it has a trick for sending attachments and then like, basically converting a binary (computer code) file into a text file, then back again later). So, if you try and paste something like Zapf-Dingbats fonts into youremail message, or parts of a word document, it won't work.

ASCII Art:

So, when people wanted to fancy up their email messages, or make a very distinctive signature file, or just plain waste time, they developed pictures using just the keyboard characters. This may be like the old typing exercise they gave students, where, on a typewriter, a series of X's and O's and other characters became a picture.

Some of these can be very elaborate, and you can find examples at the following links, amongst other places.

Here is one example

                    ("`-''-/").___..--''"`-._
                     `6_ 6  )   `-.  (     ).`-.__.`)
                     (_Y_.)'  ._   )  `._ `. ``-..-'
                   _..`--'_..-_/  /--'_.' ,'
billn@tiac.net____(il),-''  (li),'  ((!.-'

ASCII Art Links

• Christopher Johnson's ASCII Art Collection
• ASCII Art Creator
• ASCII Art Gallery
• Gif to ASCII converter
• Holiday ASCII Art
• Signature Museum