What is an ASCII File?

"A text file in which each byte represents one character according to the ASCII code. [This is in] contrast to a binary file, in which there is no one-to-one mapping between bytes and characters. Files that have been formatted with a word processor must be stored and transmitted as binary files to preserve the formatting. ASCII files are sometimes called plain text files. After it was (more or less) agreed upon that character sets would be developed using 7-bits, computer architects began building computers based on groupings of 7-bits and associated a unique symbol with each of the groupings."