| English | French |
| agent character | personnage Microsoft Agent (An interactive animated character who guides users through Windows Welcome. The character interacts with the user in ways similar to the natural aspects of human social communication. Characters can respond by using synthesized speech, recorded audio, or text in a cartoon word balloon) |
| ANSI character set | jeu de caractères ANSI (An 8-bit character set used by Microsoft Windows that allows you to represent up to 256 characters (0 through 255) by using your keyboard. The ASCII character set is a subset of the ANSI set) |
| Any Character | Tout caractère (A menu item that allows the user to search a string based on a wildcard for a character, when the number of letters is known. Example: The search for D*O** will return all five-letter words that begin with a D and where O is the third letter) |
| Any Character, 0 or More Matches | Tout caractère, 0 correspondance ou plus (A menu item that allows the user to search a string based on a wildcard for a character. Example: The search for D*O** will return all words that begin with a D and where O is the third letter) |
| ASCII character set | jeu de caractères ASCII (A standard 7-bit code for representing ASCII characters using binary values; code values range from 0 to 127. Most PC-based systems use an 8-bit extended ASCII code, with an extra 128 characters used to represent special symbols, foreign-language characters, and graphic symbols) |
| base character | caractère de base (A character that has meaning independent of other characters, or any graphical character that is not a diacritical mark) |
| character code | code de caractère (A numeric value that corresponds to a particular character in a set) |
| character data | données caractères (All the textual content of an element or attribute that is not markup. XML differentiates this plain text from binary data. In the XML OM, character data is stored in text nodes, which are implemented as DOM text objects) |
| character encoding | codage de caractères (A one-to-one mapping between a set of characters and a set of numbers) |
| character entity | entité de caractère (A code that's used in HTML to describe symbols, international letters, and other special characters. Character entities are maintained by the International Standards Organization (ISO)) |
| character formatting | mise en forme de caractères (Formatting you can apply to selected text characters) |
| Character Map | Table des caractères (A feature in Windows that makes it possible to use characters that are not displayed on the keyboard) |
| Character Map | Table des caractères (A feature in Windows that makes it possible to use characters that are not displayed on the keyboard) |
| character mode | mode caractère (" A display mode in which the monitor can display letters, numbers, and other text characters but no graphical images or WYSIWYG ("what-you-see-is-what-you-get") character formatting (italics, superscript, and so on).") |
| character pad | pavé de caractères (The pad in Tablet PC Input Panel that you can use to write one character (such as a letter, number, or symbol) at a time. Each character is converted into typed text) |
| character set | jeu de caractères (A grouping of alphabetic, numeric, and other characters that have some relationship in common. For example, the standard ASCII character set includes letters, numbers, symbols, and control codes that make up the ASCII coding scheme) |
| character spacing | espacement des caractères (The distance between characters in a line of text. Tracking, kerning, and scaling can be used to adjust the space between characters) |
| character string | chaîne de caractères (A set of characters treated as a unit and interpreted by a computer as text rather than numbers. A character string can contain any sequence of elements from a given character set, such as letters, numbers, control characters, and extended ASCII characters) |
| character style | style de caractère (A combination of any of the character formatting options identified by a style name) |
| combining character | caractère de non-espacement (A character, such as diacritic, that has no meaning by itself, but overlaps a base character to modify it) |
| composite character | caractère composite (A text element consisting of a base character and a diacritic or accent mark. Although most common in the Latin script, other scripts (including Greek, Devanagari, and Tamil) also have composite characters) |
| control character | caractère de contrôle (A character that is inserted in right-to-left and mixed text to specify the formatting of text when the inherent directionality of the text is insufficient to display expected results) |
| directory character | caractère spécifique de dossier (" A character that is used to denote the directory, for instance "\" or "/" or ":". Depending on what OS you're running on e.g. c:\bin\dos\ would be a directory on your machine.") |
| double byte character set | jeu de caractères codés sur deux octets (A character set that can use more than one byte to represent a single character. A DBCS includes some characters that consist of 1 byte and some characters that consist of 2 bytes. Languages such as Chinese, Japanese, and Korean use DBCS) |
| double-byte character set | jeu de caractères codés sur deux octets (A character set that can use more than one byte to represent a single character. A DBCS includes some characters that consist of 1 byte and some characters that consist of 2 bytes. Languages such as Chinese, Japanese, and Korean use DBCS) |
| double-byte characters | caractères codés sur deux octets (A set of characters in which each character is represented by two bytes. Some languages, such as Japanese, Chinese, and Korean, require double-byte character sets) |
| escape character | caractère d'échappement (A single character that suppresses any special meaning of the character that follows it) |
| extended character | caractère étendu (Any of the 128 additional characters in the extended ASCII (8-bit) character set. These characters include those in several non-English languages, such as accent marks, and special symbols used for creating pictures) |
| four character code | code FOURCC (A 32-bit unsigned integer that is created by concatenating four ASCII characters to identify a data format) |
| full-width character | caractère à pleine chasse (In a double-byte character set, a character that is represented by 2 bytes and typically has a half-width variant) |
| half-width character | caractère à demi-chasse (In a double-byte character set, a character that is represented by one byte and typically has a full-width variant) |
| icon character | personnage animé (The animated icon from the Help and Support Center that guides users through their first-run experience or Windows Welcome) |
| identifier type character | caractère de type identificateur (" A character that that forces a literal to assume a data type other than the one its form indicates. You do this by appending the character to the end of the literal. For example, "%" forces the Integer data type of the literal "L" in the following declaration: Dim L%.") |
| ideographic character | idéogramme (A character in an Asian writing system that represents a concept or an idea, but not a particular word or pronunciation) |
| leader character | caractère de suite (A dot, hyphen, or other character used to create a line that fills the space before a tab stop) |
| list-separator character | caractère séparateur de liste (A character, usually a comma or semicolon, that separates elements in a list) |
| literal type character | caractère de type littéral (A textual representation of a particular value of a data type. For example, 2147483647 represents a value of integer data type) |
| magnetic ink character recognition | reconnaissance des caractères à encre magnétique (A character recognition system for reading and processing data that uses special inks and characters) |
| magnetic ink character recognition line | ligne de reconnaissance des caractères à encre magnétique (A line of characters that is encoded with a special type of ink that can be magnetized and then translated into characters. MICR lines are used on bank checks to identify the bank, account, and check) |
| MAHJONG TILE ONE OF CHARACTERS | TUILE DE MAH-JONG CHIFFRE UN (The Unicode character U+1F007, which represents a Mahjong tile) |
| multibyte character set | jeu de caractères multioctets (A mixed-width character set, in which some characters consist of more than 1 byte. An MBCS is used in languages such as Japanese, Chinese, and Korean, where the 256 possible values of a single-byte character set are not sufficient to represent all possible characters) |
| neutral character | caractère neutre (A character that does not have strong right-to-left or left-to-right language attributes) |
| non-printable character | caractère non imprimable (A character used to control the format of displayed or printed information, rather than to represent a particular letter, digit, or other special character. The space () is one of the more important nonprinting characters) |
| nonprinting character | caractère non imprimable (A character used to control the format of displayed or printed information, rather than to represent a particular letter, digit, or other special character. The space () is one of the more important nonprinting characters) |
| non-spacing character | caractère de non-espacement (A character, such as diacritic, that has no meaning by itself, but overlaps a base character to modify it) |
| null character | caractère Null (" A character code with a null value; literally, a character meaning "nothing." Although it is real in the sense of being recognizable, occupying space internally in the computer, and being sent or received as a character, a NUL character displays nothing, takes no space on the screen or on paper, and causes no specific action when sent to a printer. In ASCII, NUL is represented by the character code 0. ") |
| optical character recognition | reconnaissance optique de caractères (A method of translating images of printed text into machine-encoded text) |
| optical character recognition line | ligne de reconnaissance optique des caractères (A line of characters that is read by special character recognition equipment and translated into computer text) |
| ordinary character | caractère ordinaire (In regular expressions, any valid character that does not have a special meaning in the current regular expression grammar) |
| pattern-matching character | caractère générique (A keyboard character that can be used to represent one or many characters when conducting a query) |
| precomposed character | caractère précomposé (A single character that represents a sequence of characters, usually a combination of a base character and one or more diacritics) |
| prefix characters | caractères de préfixe (A set of 1 to 4 bytes that prefix each data field in a native-format bulk-copy data file) |
| reserved character | caractère réservé (A keyboard character that has a special meaning to a program and, as a result, normally cannot be used in assigning names to files, documents, and other user-generated tools, such as macros. Characters commonly reserved for special uses include the asterisk (*), forward slash (/), backslash (\), question mark (?), and vertical bar (|)) |
| separator character | caractère de séparation, séparateur (A character you choose to indicate where you want text to separate when you convert a table to text, or where you want new rows or columns to begin when you convert text to a table) |
| single-byte character set | jeu de caractères codés sur un octet (A character encoding in which each character is represented by 1 byte. Single byte character sets are mathematically limited to 256 characters) |
| space character | espace (A character that is entered by pressing the SPACEBAR on the keyboard and that typically appears on the screen as a blank space) |
| spacing character | caractère d'espacement (A character with a non-zero width) |
| special character | caractère spécial (A character that is not found on your keyboard and must be inserted from within the software or by pressing a combination of keys on your keyboard) |
| tab character | caractère de tabulation (A character used to align lines and columns on screen and in print. Although a tab is visually indistinguishable from a series of blank spaces in most programs, the tab character and the space character are different to a computer. A tab is a single character and therefore can be added, deleted, or overtyped with a single keystroke) |
| tab character | tabulation (A character used to align lines and columns on screen and in print. Although a tab is visually indistinguishable from a series of blank spaces in most programs, the tab character and the space character are different to a computer. A tab is a single character and therefore can be added, deleted, or overtyped with a single keystroke) |
| Universal Character Set | jeu universel de caractères (An international standard character set reference that is part of the Unicode standard. The most widely held existing version of the UCS standard is UCS-2, which specifies 16-bit character values currently accepted and recognized for use to encode most of the world's languages) |
| unsafe character | caractère non sécurisé (A character in a URL that may be altered during transport across the Internet) |
| white-space character | espace blanc (" Any characters that can be found between words - this includes space (" "), newline (carriage return in combination with line feed), and the tab character.") |
| wide character | caractère large (A 2-byte multilingual character code) |
| wildcard character | caractère générique (A keyboard character that can be used to represent one or many characters when conducting a query) |
