After specifying the RTF version, you must declare the character set used in this document. The control word for the character set must precede any plain text or any table control words. The RTF Specification currently supports the following character sets.
| Control word | Character set |
| \ansi | ANSI (the default) |
| \mac | Apple Macintosh |
| \pc | IBM PC code page 437 |
| \pca | IBM PC code page 850, used by IBM Personal System/2 (not implemented in version 1 of Microsoft Word for OS/2) |