Before the development of the Unicode standard, character data was limited to sets of 256 characters. This limitation came from the one-byte storage space used by a single character; one byte can represent only 256 different bit combinations. The Unicode standard expands the number of possible values for character data. By doubling the amount of storage space used for a single character, the Unicode standard exponentially increases the number of possible character values from 256 to 65,536. With this increased range, the Unicode standard includes letters, numbers, and symbols used in languages around the world, including all of the values from the previously existing character sets.