If I may suggest this, some of you posters are having problems because you want a monospaced font and your resultant posts are in justified font.

Do your ascii art by prefixing with the HTML command
pre
and ending it with
/pre.
Put a < before and a > after each command.

I made four 'balloons' below using the method described.

  
  o o  o                 o
  | |  |                 |
  
  

doug