String data is left justified with trailing blanks optional. Any displayable (printable) ACSII characters (hexadecimal values between 20 and 7E, inclusive, or ASCII decimal values between 32 and 126), except the defined delimiter characters. Example:
|almost any data at all|
To include any HL7 delimiter character (except the segment terminator) within a string data field, use the appropriate HL7 escape sequence (see Section 2.9.1, "Formatting codes").
Usage note: the ST data type is intended for short strings (e.g., less than 200 characters). For longer strings the TX or FT data types should be used (see Sections 2.8.43, "TX - text data" or 2.8.17, "FT - formatted text data").