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ISO/IEC 8859-1
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<p>ISO/IEC 8859-1:1998, <i>Information technology—<a href="/facts/8-bit_computing/2CkhLNoH">8-bit</a> single-<a href="/facts/Byte/BNHUp9Qq">byte</a> coded graphic <a href="/facts/Character_(computing)/X2zKLFFB">character</a> sets—Part 1: Latin alphabet No. 1</i>, is part of the <a href="/facts/ISO%2fIEC_8859/KFAUkAQ9">ISO/IEC 8859</a> series of <a href="/facts/ASCII/vGUI33Qu">ASCII</a>-based standard <a href="/facts/Character_encoding/ShJHIMoA">character encodings</a>, first edition published in 1987. ISO/IEC 8859-1 encodes what it refers to as "Latin alphabet no. 1", consisting of 191 <a href="/facts/Character_(computing)/X2zKLFFB">characters</a> from the <a href="/facts/Latin_script/7EWeJjUV">Latin script</a>. This character-encoding scheme is used throughout the <a href="/facts/Americas/hEuUTL4K">Americas</a>, <a href="/facts/Western_Europe/YmWlV59w">Western Europe</a>, <a href="/facts/Oceania/vzTEvsfV">Oceania</a>, and much of <a href="/facts/Africa/XkqQUP9s">Africa</a>. It is the basis for some popular 8-bit character sets and the first two blocks of characters in <a href="/facts/Unicode/DDu3MfPV">Unicode</a>. </p><p>As of April 2025, 1.1% of all <a href="/facts/Website/SAsjJnca">web sites</a> use ISO/IEC 8859-1. It is the most declared single-byte character encoding, but as Web browsers and the <a href="/facts/HTML5/HBAxEAr6">HTML5</a> standard interpret them as the superset <a href="/facts/Windows-1252/eyM337y0">Windows-1252</a>, these documents may include characters from that set. Some countries or languages show a higher usage than the global average, in 2025 Brazil according to website use, use is at 2.9%, and in Germany at 2.3%. </p><p>ISO-8859-1 was (according to the standard, at least) the default encoding of documents delivered via <a href="/facts/Hypertext_Transfer_Protocol/TWtvf7JD">HTTP</a> with a <a href="/facts/Media_type/A31N5Fwj">MIME type</a> beginning with text/, the default encoding of the values of certain descriptive HTTP headers, and defined the repertoire of characters allowed in <a href="/facts/HTML/sSc3fT78">HTML</a> 3.2 documents. It is specified by many other standards.[<i>example needed</i>] In practice, the superset encoding Windows-1252 is the more likely effective default and it is increasingly common for <a href="/facts/UTF-8/xlaVHSyf">UTF-8</a> to work whether or not a standard specifies it. </p><p>ISO-8859-1 is the <a href="/facts/Internet_Assigned_Numbers_Authority/b6MlP6zQ">IANA</a> preferred name for this standard when supplemented with the <a href="/facts/C0_and_C1_control_codes/bBp1dGVl">C0 and C1 control codes</a> from <a href="/facts/ISO%2fIEC_6429/29l9Yalv">ISO/IEC 6429</a>. The following other aliases are registered: iso-ir-100, csISOLatin1, latin1, l1, IBM819, Code page 28591 a.k.a. Windows-28591 is used for it in Windows. IBM calls it code page 819 or CP819 (<a href="/facts/CCSID/NKSgxNDg">CCSID</a> 819). <a href="/facts/Oracle_Database/FHv5g732">Oracle</a> calls it WE8ISO8859P1. </p>