For any ring 5 we define and describe its characteristic ring, K(S). It plays the role of the usual characteristic even in rings whose additive structure, (S, +), is complicated. The ring K(S) is an invariant of (S, +) and also reflects certain non-additive properties of S. If R is a left faithful ring without identity element, we show how to use K(R) to embed R in a ring R x with identity. This unital overling of R inherits many ring properties of R; for instance, if R is artinian, noetherian, semiprime Goldie, regular, biregular or a K-ring, so too is R l . In the case of regularity (or generalizations thereof), /?' satisfies a universal property with respect to the adjunction of an identity