CSV Character Encodings: UTF-8, UTF-16, and BOM Explained

### UTF-8 vs ANSI / Windows-1252

Character encoding determines how text characters (letters, accents, emojis, non-Latin scripts) are translated into raw binary bytes.
- **UTF-8**: The global standard encoding for web and modern software. Supports all international scripts.
- **ANSI / Windows-1252**: Older legacy Windows encoding. Opening a UTF-8 file containing accents in an ANSI reader produces corrupt characters (e.g. `Café` instead of `Café`).

### What is a Byte Order Mark (BOM)?

A **UTF-8 BOM** is a 3-byte sequence (`0xEF, 0xBB, 0xBF`) placed at the very beginning of a file to signal to applications (like Excel) that the file uses UTF-8 encoding.