diff --git a/etc/NEWS b/etc/NEWS
index ddc2fb9d600..2fe66be15f0 100644
--- a/etc/NEWS
+++ b/etc/NEWS
@@ -1295,6 +1295,9 @@ ledit.el, lmenu.el, lucid.el and old-whitespace.el.
 
 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 28.1
 
+---
+*** 'ascii' is now a coding system alias for 'us-ascii'.
+
 +++
 *** New function 'file-backup-file-names'.
 This function returns the list of file names of all the backup files
diff --git a/lisp/international/mule-conf.el b/lisp/international/mule-conf.el
index edda79ba4ee..c84f0a49901 100644
--- a/lisp/international/mule-conf.el
+++ b/lisp/international/mule-conf.el
@@ -1508,6 +1508,7 @@ for decoding and encoding files, process I/O, etc."
   :mime-charset 'us-ascii)
 
 (define-coding-system-alias 'iso-safe 'us-ascii)
+(define-coding-system-alias 'ascii 'us-ascii)
 
 (define-coding-system 'utf-7
   "UTF-7 encoding of Unicode (RFC 2152)."