A character set can include alphabetical characters, numbers, and other symbols. Different encoding standards for different alphabets Different languages commonly consist of different sets of characters, so many different encoding standards exist to represent the character sets that are used in different languages. The encoding standard that is saved with a text file provides the information that your computer needs to display the text on the screen.
For example, in the Cyrillic (Windows) encoding, the character Й has the numeric value 201. When you open a file that contains this character on a computer that uses the Cyrillic (Windows) encoding, the computer reads the 201 numeric value and displays Й on the screen. However, if you open the same file on a computer that uses a different encoding, the computer displays whatever character corresponds to the 201 numeric value in the encoding standard that the computer uses by default. For example, if your computer uses the Western European (Windows) encoding standard, the character in the original Cyrillic-based file will be displayed as É rather than Й because in Western European (Windows) encoding, the value 201 maps to É.
