Character encoding
= Character encoding
A <character encoding> specifies how characters are represented by numerical units and ultimately stored or transmitted as <bytes>. <Unicode> assigns <code points>; <UTF-8> is one <character encoding> for those <code points>. Keeping identity and representation separate lets the same text have several byte representations.<UTF-8, a transformation format of ISO 10646 by Francois Yergeau>[§3, UTF-8 definition and encoding table]{ref}
For example, `U+00E9` becomes <hexadecimal> `C3 A9` in <UTF-8>. A reader using an incompatible <character encoding> can interpret those two <bytes> as two unrelated characters. Correct decoding therefore requires the <character encoding>, and invalid sequences require an explicit error policy. The <character encoding> alone does not determine the <font> or <glyph> used to display the result.