22. The method of claim 21, wherein the first defined number is one and the second defined number is three.
21. A method of encoding a data string into a symbol, the method of encoding comprising the steps of: receiving the data string comprising a plurality of character codes selected from a first set of character codes, wherein the first set of character codes map to a first set of data characters, and wherein a second set of data characters form a subset of the data characters in the first set of data characters; parsing the data string to remove all character codes corresponding to the data characters contained in the second set of data characters; converting each of the character codes in the parsed data string into a first defined number of symbol values, and converting the character codes parsed from the data string into a second defined number of symbol values, where the second defined number of symbol values is greater than the first defined number of symbol values; and outputting the converted symbol values corresponding to the parsed character codes and the converted symbol values corresponding to the parsed data string.