Character encoding is the process of mapping characters to a specific numeric representation so they can be stored and transmitted digitally. It's like assigning a unique ID badge to each letter, number, and symbol so computers can keep track of them all.

How to use it in a sentence

"Hey, did you remember to set the character encoding to UTF-8 for the new API endpoints? We don't want to end up with garbled text like that time the intern used ASCII on the Facebook integration."

"I spent all day debugging that weird issue with the user input fields, only to realize the problem was the character encoding the whole time. Gotta love those 'gotcha' moments that make you question your life choices as a developer."

If you actually want to learn more...

• For a deep dive into the wild world of character encoding, check out Joel Spolsky's classic article, "The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Absolutely, Positively Must Know About Unicode and Character Sets (No Excuses!)": https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2003/10/08/the-absolute-minimum-every-software-developer-absolutely-positively-must-know-about-unicode-and-character-sets-no-excuses/

• If you're more of a visual learner, check out this handy guide to character encoding from the fine folks at Google: https://www.google.com/intl/en/chartguide/charencoding.html

• And if you really want to impress your fellow code monkeys at the next hackathon, brush up on your character encoding trivia with this in-depth article from the Unicode Consortium: https://www.unicode.org/standard/principles.html

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