Which characteristic of Unicode allows it to store a wider range of characters?

The ability of Unicode to store a wider range of characters is directly linked to its capacity for a 32-bit representation. Unlike character encoding systems such as ASCII, which typically use only 7 or 8 bits and are limited to a small set of characters, Unicode was designed to accommodate a comprehensive array of characters from various languages and scripts across the world.

By utilizing 32 bits, Unicode can represent over four billion unique characters, thus encompassing virtually every character from every writing system, including modern and historical scripts, mathematical symbols, and even emoji. This vast range of representation ensures that text in any language can be uniformly encoded and processed, making Unicode the standard for character encoding in modern computing systems.

In contrast, the other options are unable to propose a suitable characteristic of Unicode for storing a broader range of characters; restricting to 8 bits or 16 bits would further limit the character set, while stating it uses a binary representation only does not address the specific limitation of character diversity.