ASCII art is a graphic design technique that uses computers for presentation and consists of pictures pieced together from the 95 printable (from a total of 128) characters defined by the ASCII Standard from 1963 and ASCII compliant character sets with proprietary extended characters (beyond the 128 characters of standard 7-bit ASCII). The term is also loosely used to refer to text-based visual art in general.

<graphics> (Or "character graphics", "ASCII graphics") The fine art of drawing diagrams using the ASCII character set (mainly "|-/+"). See also boxology. Here is a serious example: o----)||(--+--|<----+ +---------o + D O L )||( | | | C U A I )||( +-->|-+ | +-//-+--o - T C N )||( | | | | P E )||( +-->|-+--)---+--)|--+-o U )||( | | | GND T o----)||(--+--|<----+----------+ A power supply consisting of a full wave rectifier circuit feeding a capacitor input filter circuit Figure 1. And here are some very silly examples: |///| ____/| ___ |\_/| ___ | | o.O| ACK! / \_ |' '| _/ | | =(_)= THPHTH! / / / | (o)(o) U / C _) (__) /// _____ //// | ,___| (oo) / / | / /------- U (__) /____ || | /---V 'v'- oo ) / ||---W|| * * |--| || |'. |_/ //-o- ____---=======---____ ====___ /.. .. /___==== Klingons rule OK! // ---\__O__/--- \_ /_/ _____ __...---'-----'---...__ _=============================== ,----------------._/' '---..._______...---' (_______________||_) . . ,--' / /.---' '/ '--------_- - - - - _/ '--------' Figure 2. There is an important subgenre of ASCII art that puns on the standard character names in the fashion of a rebus. +--------------------------------------------------------+ | ^^^^^^^^^^^^ | | ^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^ | | ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ | | ^^^^^^^ B ^^^^^^^^^ | | ^^^^^^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ | +--------------------------------------------------------+ "A Bee in the Carrot Patch" Figure 3. Within humorous ASCII art, there is, for some reason, an entire flourishing subgenre of pictures of silly cows. One is shown in Figure 2; here are three more: (__) (__) (__) (/) ($$) (**) /-------/ /-------/ /-------/ / | 666 || / |=====|| / | || * ||----|| * ||----|| * ||----|| ASCII artASCII art ASCII artASCII art ASCII artASCII art ASCII artASCII art ASCII artASCII art ASCII artASCII art Satanic cow This cow is a Yuppie Cow in love Figure 4. ASCII artboba/scarecrow.html">http://gagme.wwa.com/ASCII artboba/scarecrow.html. (1996-02-06)

A collection of standard ASCII characters used to create images. Can be extremely complex or extremely simple, though rarely contained to just one line.
See Also: Emoticons
That ASCII art of the cow was quite creative. :D