Single-byte and multibyte code sets

Code sets that use all 8 bits of a byte can support European, Middle Eastern, and other alphabetic languages. Such code sets are called single-byte code sets. Single-byte code sets have a limit of encoding 191 characters, not including control characters.

Languages that require more than 191 characters use a mixture of single-byte characters (8 bits) and multibyte characters (more than 8 bits). The system can support any number of bits to encode a character.