Code 11

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title: "Code 11" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["barcodes"] description: "Barcode symbology" topic_path: "general/barcodes" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_11" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Barcode symbology ::

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/code11_barcode.png" caption=""''0123452''" encoded in Code 11"] ::

Code 11 is a barcode symbology developed by Intermec in 1977, and it is used primarily in telecommunications. The symbol can encode any length string consisting of the digits 0–9 and the dash character (-). A twelfth code represents the start/stop character, commonly printed as "*". One or two modulo-11 check digit(s) can be included.

It is a discrete, binary symbology where each digit consists of three bars and two spaces; a single narrow space separates consecutive symbols. The width of a digit is not fixed; three digits (0, 9 and -) have one wide element, while the others have two wide elements.

The valid codes have one wide bar, and may have one additional wide element (bar or space).

::data[format=table title="Code 11 digits"] | Character | Widths|| Barcode | |---|---| | 0 | 00001 | | 1 | 10001 | | 2 | 01001 | | 3 | 11000 | | 4 | 00101 | | 5 | 10100 | | 6 | 01100 | | 7 | 00011 | | 8 | 10010 | | 9 | 10000 | | - | 00100 | | Stop/Start | 00110 | ::

::data[format=table title="Code 11 decoding"] | Wide element ||colspan=3| Wide bar | Left || Middle || Right | Left bar | Left space | Middle bar | Right space | Right bar | |---|---|---|---|---|---|---| | 9 | 5 | 1 | | | | | | 3 | 6 | 2 | | | | | | 5 | - | 4 | | | | | | 8 | * | 7 | | | | | | 1 | 4 | 0 | | | | | ::

The decode table has 15 entries because the symbols with two wide bars (1, 4 and 5) are listed twice.

Assuming narrow elements are one unit wide and wide elements are two units, the average digit is 7.8 units. This is better than codes with a larger repertoire like Codabar (10 units) or Code 39 (11 units), but not quite as good as interleaved 2 of 5 (7 units). The non-binary symbology Code 128 uses 5.5 units per digit (11 units per digit pair).

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::