ASCII is a multi-byte encoding system. Yes, really, it is. The character set was designed specifically so that overstrike can be used to express a variety of

ASCII is a multi-byte encoding system. Yes, really, it is. The character set was designed specifically so that overstrike can be used to express a variety of characters from Latin scripts: lower-case ones with cedille or accents. E.g., to encode 'á' (&aacute;) you'd output "a<BS>'", where BS is the ASCII backspace control character. This comes from the days of typewriters, where this is how people would print accented characters and cedilles. The lower-case restriction is why Spanish makes accents optional on upper-case letters. Most of this overstrike functionality was lost long ago except for underline and bold, which remain in use in terminals (and `nroff`, and...).