What is ASCII art?

    ASCII (pronounced "ask-key") art is any sort of pictures or diagrams
    drawn with the printable characters in the ASCII character set.
    (For a definition of ASCII, see Question 2.)

    :-) Probably the most common ASCII art picture is the smiley (-:
        but it can get a lot more sophisticated than that.
               ____
            .-" +' "-.      Here's a small ASCII picture of
           /.'.'A_'*`.\     a snow-scene paperweight:
          |:.*'/\-\. ':|  
          |:.'.||"|.'*:|    If this picture looks very strange and
           \:~^~^~^~^:/     you can't really tell what it is,
            /`-....-'\      don't panic, just see Question 5...
           /   SANG   \    
           `-.,____,.-'

    People use ASCII art for a number of reasons. Here are some of them.
    *   It is the most universal computer art form worldwide, and
        every computer system capable of displaying multi-line text can
        display ASCII art, without needing to have a graphics mode or
        support a particular graphics file format.
    *   An ASCII picture is hundreds of times smaller in file size
        than its .GIF or .BMP equivalent, all while still giving a good
        idea of what something looks like.
    *   It's easy to copy from one file to another (just cut and paste).
    *   It's like totally uber fun!