RS232 is a protocol for communications between pieces of computer equipment.
The hardware form consists of between 3 and 9 wires.
In it's simplest form, it involves 3 wires - Transmit, Recieve, and Ground (or common). As it was originally developed for modems, there are additional signals used by some systems such as "clear to send," "ready to send," and "data set ready."
Data is transmitted between the two devices by means of electrical pulses. A 0 is represented by no voltage, and a 1 is respresented by +5 volts. How long the signals last is determined by BAUD rate. The higher the baud rate, the faster the electrical pulses that create the signal.
Data transfer is usually accomplished in bytes, which are packetized based on "start bits," "data", "parity," and "stop bits."
8N1 is the abbreviation for 8 data bits, no parity, and 1 stop bit.
To send the number 1 over an 8N1 scheme, the pulses would look like this:
1 start bit = +5v
0 high data bit
0
0
0
0
0
0
1 low data bit
0 no parity, so it's always zero
1 stop bit.
How long the pulses last depends on BAUD rate, as mentioned earlier. At 100 BAUD, you transmit 100 bytes per second (which is not exactly 100 bits, as each byte takes 11 bits to transmit).
Since RS232 is mainly a hardware standard, generally there is a "Transport Protocol" which is overlayed on top of it to actually define what a data packet means.
Some typical transport protocols are X-Modem, Y-Modem, K-Modem.
Hope this gets you started. You really have to know what protocol the device you want to talk to speaks in order for RS232 to be useful.