The ASCII ribbon campaign is an Internet phenomenon started in 1998 advocating that e-mail be sent only in plain text, because of inefficiencies or dangers of using HTML e-mail. Proponents placed ASCII art in their signature blocks, meant to look like an awareness ribbon, along with a message or link to an advocacy site:

 ()  ascii ribbon campaign - against HTML e-mail  /\  www.asciiribbon.org   - against proprietary attachments 

                        _ ASCII ribbon campaign ( )  against HTML e-mail   X                       / \ 

 /"\ \ /  ASCII Ribbon Campaign  X    against HTML e-mail / \ 

History

Following the development of Microsoft Windows 95, certain people became annoyed that they were receiving email in HTML and other non-human-readable formats. Sally Hambridge of the Intel Corporation wrote in the RFC 1855 entitled "Netiquette Guidelines" dated October 1995: "Do not include control characters or non-ASCII attachments in email messages". The first known appearance of a ribbon in support of the campaign was in the signature of an email dated 17 June 1998 by Mauricio Teixeira of Brazil.^[1]

See also

• ASCII
• Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
• MIME

References

External links

• The ASCII Ribbon Campaign
• ASCII Ribbon Campaign
• The ASCII Ribbon Campaign and its supporters

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