Unicode to ASCII Converter
Convert Unicode text containing accented characters, special symbols, and non-Latin scripts to ASCII-safe output. This tool strips diacritical marks, transliterates ligatures, and replaces special characters with their closest ASCII equivalents - useful for generating URL slugs, filenames, and search-friendly text.
Conversion Reference
| Unicode | ASCII | Description |
|---|---|---|
| a with various accents | a | Diacritics stripped |
| ae ligature | ae | Ligature expanded |
| sharp s | ss | German eszett expanded |
| curly quotes | " ' | Straight quotes substituted |
| copyright/trademark | (c) (R) (TM) | Symbol expanded to ASCII |
| currency symbols | EUR GBP JPY | Currency code substituted |
Frequently Asked Questions
What does Unicode to ASCII conversion do?
It replaces accented and special characters with their closest ASCII equivalents. For example, e with acute accent becomes e, u with umlaut becomes u, and curly quotes become straight quotes. Characters with no ASCII equivalent are replaced with a question mark.
When would I need to convert Unicode to ASCII?
Common use cases include generating URL-safe slugs from titles containing accented characters, creating ASCII-compatible filenames, normalizing text for search indexing, preparing data for legacy systems that only support 7-bit ASCII, and sanitizing user input for systems with limited character support.
Does this conversion lose information?
Yes - converting from Unicode to ASCII is a lossy process. Diacritical marks are removed, ligatures are expanded (such as ae from the ae ligature), and characters without ASCII equivalents are replaced. The original Unicode text cannot be perfectly reconstructed from the ASCII output.