Counter arguement: Check out the 'charset' attribute of the 'Content=type' meta-tag of the html formats of any of the books at Project Gutenberg.

OK, I did. It’s ISO 8859-1, not ASCII. How’s this a counterargument?

Bottom line: If you were instructed to "resume writing your resume", you would have no trouble in distinguishing la difference.

Tom’s assertion is that computer software (“code”) that assumes English-language digital text won’t have letters and punctuation in it that aren’t among the 94 printable characters in the ASCII character set is wrong. He’s right. This is the bottom line.

This paragraph is written entirely in English—no accented “foreign” words or loanwords with diacritics—and yet it’s full of non-ASCII characters. Hopefully, you’re not using lousy computer software—the kind of “code” Tom assails in his anti-pattern—that renders this paragraph like this…

This paragraph is written entirely in English?no accented ?foreign? words or loanwords with diacritics?and yet it?s full of non-ASCII characters. Hopefully, you?re not using lousy computer software?the kind of ?code? Tom assails in his anti-pattern?that renders this paragraph like this?