American Standard Code for Information Interchange (Pronounced: /as'kee/)
The worldwide standard for the code numbers used by computers to represent all the uppercase and lowercase Latin letters, numbers, punctuation, and other symbols. Each of the 128 standard ASCII codes can be represented by a seven-digit binary number: 0000000 through 1111111. In the online world, ASCII is also used to describe files that are stored in plain text format. One rather inventive use of ASCII is in ASCII art, a lowbrow art form in a high-tech medium, using only the ASCII character set to create images.
Any downloadable file that doesn't simply contain human-readable, ASCII text. Typically, binary refers to an executable program that is available to download. Pictures, sounds, movies, and other files can be referred to as binary files.