Final answer:
To represent a 10-letter word using ASCII encoding, we would need 70 bits.
Step-by-step explanation:
To determine how many bits are needed for a 10-letter word, we need to understand how bits are used to represent characters. In computing, characters are typically represented using a character encoding scheme, such as ASCII or Unicode. ASCII uses 7 bits to represent a character, while Unicode can use up to 32 bits. Let's assume we are using ASCII encoding.
Since ASCII uses 7 bits per character, we would need 7 bits x 10 letters = 70 bits to represent a 10-letter word.