A letter, number, punctuation mark, or other symbolor control code that is represented to a computer by one unit—1 byte—0f information. A character is notnecessarily visible, either on the screen or on paper; a space, for example, is as much a character as is the letter a. Because computers must manage both so-called printable characters and the formatting and transfer ofelectronically stored information, a character can also indicate a carriage return or a paragraph mark in a word-processed docu ment, or it can be a signal to sound a beep or begin a new page.