having just one character set to deal with would be nice howevernot everyone could agree on single set of numeric values to equate with specific characters part of the problem is that ascii doesn' support characters used by other languagesalsoit lacks the capability to translate special characters into an onscreen presentation in factcharacter sets abound you can see number of them at html click one of the character set entries to see how it assigns specific numeric values to each character most characters sets do use ascii as starting point using characters to create strings python doesn' make you jump through hoops to create strings howeverthe term string should actually give you good idea of what happens think about beads or anything else you might string you place one bead at time onto the string eventually you end up with some type of ornamentation -perhaps necklace or tree garland the point is that these items are made up of individual beads the same concept used for necklaces made of beads holds true for strings in computers when you see sentenceyou understand that the sentence is made up of individual characters that are strung together by the programming language you use the language creates structure that holds the individual characters together sothe languagenot the computerknows that so many numbers in row (each number being represented as characterdefines string such as sentence you may wonder why it' important to even know how python works with characters the reason is that many of the functions and special features that python provides work with individual charactersand it' important to know that python sees the individual characters even though you see sentencepython sees specific number of characters unlike most programming languagesstrings can use either single quotes or double quotes for example"hello there!with double quotes is stringas is 'hello there!with single quotes python also supports triple double and single quotes that let you create strings spanning multiple lines the following steps help you create an example that demonstrates some of the string features that python provides this example also appears with the downloadable source code as basicstring py open python file window you see an editor in which you can type the example code