If nothing else is said a string is represented as ISO-8859-1 characters in the range $20 - $FF. Such strings are represented as <text string>, or <full text string> if newlines are allowed, in the frame descriptions. All Unicode strings use 16-bit unicode 2.0 (ISO/IEC 10646-1:1993, UCS-2). Unicode strings must begin with the Unicode BOM ($FF FE or $FE FF) to identify the byte order.

All numeric strings and URLs are always encoded as ISO-8859-1. Terminated strings are terminated with $00 if encoded with ISO-8859-1 and $00 00 if encoded as unicode. If nothing else is said newline character is forbidden. In ISO-8859-1 a new line is represented, when allowed, with $0A only. Frames that allow different types of text encoding have a text encoding description byte directly after the frame size. If ISO-8859-1 is used this byte should be $00, if Unicode is used it should be $01. Strings dependent on encoding is represented as <text string according to encoding>, or <full text string according to encoding> if newlines are allowed. Any empty Unicode strings which are NULL-terminated may have the Unicode BOM followed by a Unicode NULL ($FF FE 00 00 or $FE FF 00 00).