Text to Binary

Two different meanings of “text to binary”, and a switch that says which one you got

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Direction

Base

One group per

Separator

UTF-8 byte is what a computer means and round-trips anything. Character is what a puzzle means. Pure ASCII is identical either way.

Input

“Text to binary” is two questions, and most converters silently answer one

Ask for the binary of the letter H and everyone agrees: 01001000. Ask for the binary of é and the answers split. One says 11101001, a single eight-bit group, because é is code point 233 and 233 in binary is that. The other says 11000011 10101001, two groups, because é encoded as UTF-8 is two bytes and always has been. Neither is wrong. They are answers to different questions, and a converter that picks one without telling you is the reason two people comparing outputs decide one of them is broken.

The UTF-8 bytes mode is what a programmer means. It is what actually travels down a wire or sits in a file, it round-trips absolutely anything including emoji, and every character outside the first 128 takes more than one group. The code points mode is what a puzzle, a homework question or a binary-tattoo generator means: one group per character, width set by the character itself. Pure ASCII input is byte-for-byte identical under both, which is exactly why the difference goes unnoticed until the first accented letter or emoji shows up and the output length doubles.

The separator matters more than it looks. Eight-bit groups split by spaces are how the answer is written on a worksheet and how a decoder expects to receive it. Unseparated, it becomes one long run that only decodes if the reader already knows the group width — which is fine for ASCII and quietly lossy for anything else. Commas and one-group-per-line both exist here because spreadsheets and diff tools want them.

Hexadecimal is the same numbers in a shorter coat. Two hex digits carry exactly one byte, so 48 69 is the same information as 01001000 01101001 in a quarter of the width, which is why every hex editor, colour picker and MAC address in the world is written that way rather than in binary. The toggle changes the base and nothing else.

Two characters, UTF-8 bytes, space separated

Hi

Out

01001000 01101001

ASCII in three bases

The printable range every one of these conversions agrees on. Above 127 the two modes diverge, which is what the mode switch is for.

Character	Binary	Hex	Decimal
(space)	00100000	20	32
!	00100001	21	33
"	00100010	22	34
#	00100011	23	35
$	00100100	24	36
%	00100101	25	37
&	00100110	26	38
'	00100111	27	39
(	00101000	28	40
)	00101001	29	41
*	00101010	2A	42
+	00101011	2B	43
,	00101100	2C	44
-	00101101	2D	45
.	00101110	2E	46
/	00101111	2F	47
0	00110000	30	48
1	00110001	31	49
2	00110010	32	50
3	00110011	33	51
4	00110100	34	52
5	00110101	35	53
6	00110110	36	54
7	00110111	37	55
8	00111000	38	56
9	00111001	39	57
:	00111010	3A	58
;	00111011	3B	59
<	00111100	3C	60
=	00111101	3D	61
>	00111110	3E	62
?	00111111	3F	63

Character	Binary	Hex	Decimal
@	01000000	40	64
A	01000001	41	65
B	01000010	42	66
C	01000011	43	67
D	01000100	44	68
E	01000101	45	69
F	01000110	46	70
G	01000111	47	71
H	01001000	48	72
I	01001001	49	73
J	01001010	4A	74
K	01001011	4B	75
L	01001100	4C	76
M	01001101	4D	77
N	01001110	4E	78
O	01001111	4F	79
P	01010000	50	80
Q	01010001	51	81
R	01010010	52	82
S	01010011	53	83
T	01010100	54	84
U	01010101	55	85
V	01010110	56	86
W	01010111	57	87
X	01011000	58	88
Y	01011001	59	89
Z	01011010	5A	90
[	01011011	5B	91
\	01011100	5C	92
]	01011101	5D	93
^	01011110	5E	94
_	01011111	5F	95

Character	Binary	Hex	Decimal
`	01100000	60	96
a	01100001	61	97
b	01100010	62	98
c	01100011	63	99
d	01100100	64	100
e	01100101	65	101
f	01100110	66	102
g	01100111	67	103
h	01101000	68	104
i	01101001	69	105
j	01101010	6A	106
k	01101011	6B	107
l	01101100	6C	108
m	01101101	6D	109
n	01101110	6E	110
o	01101111	6F	111
p	01110000	70	112
q	01110001	71	113
r	01110010	72	114
s	01110011	73	115
t	01110100	74	116
u	01110101	75	117
v	01110110	76	118
w	01110111	77	119
x	01111000	78	120
y	01111001	79	121
z	01111010	7A	122
{	01111011	7B	123
\|	01111100	7C	124
}	01111101	7D	125
~	01111110	7E	126

Text to Binary questions

Why is my accented letter two groups long?

Because you are in UTF-8 bytes mode, and in UTF-8 every character above code point 127 takes two, three or four bytes. é is two, — is three, an emoji is four. If you wanted a single group per character, switch to code points mode; if you are feeding the output to anything that will actually read it as text, stay on bytes, because bytes is what UTF-8 means.

What is the binary for a space?

01000000 is a common wrong answer. A space is code point 32, so it is 00100000, and it is a character like any other — it gets its own group. The other invisible ones people ask about: a newline is 00001010, a tab is 00001001, and a carriage return is 00001101. Whether your text contains carriage returns depends on which operating system typed it.

Can I convert binary back to text here?

This page runs one way by design, because “text to binary” and “binary to text” are searched as separate things and each deserves a page that opens pointing the right way. Paste binary into the box and the direction flips automatically; or go to the binary to text page, which starts in that direction and explains what to do with a blob that will not decode.

Text to Binary

Direction

Base

One group per

Input

Output

“Text to binary” is two questions, and most converters silently answer one

ASCII in three bases

Text to Binary questions

Why is my accented letter two groups long?

What is the binary for a space?

Can I convert binary back to text here?