Pictogram

A pictogram or pictograph is a symbol which represents a concept or an object by illustration.

Early written characters were based on pictograms and ideograms, it is commonly believed that pictograms appeared before ideograms. Pictograms remain in common use today; for example the symbols on public toilets for "men" and "women."

Because pictograms do not depend on language, places such as airports and train stations use them for signposting. However, they can depend on culture—in the case of toilets, in some cultures men commonly wear dress-like clothing.

A standard set of pictograms was defined in the international standard ISO 7001: Public Information Symbols. Another common set of pictograms are the laundry symbols used on clothing tags and chemical hazard labels.

In countries or regions where two or more languages are used the typical traffic sign is very often a pictogram with no writing on it. This is the case for much of Europe and several parts of Canada. Many of these signs, however, offer an abstract symbol instead of a picture, and they cannot be considered true pictograms.

The term "pictograph" can also be used to mean

• rock painting as distinguished from petroglyphs
• a chart which represents numeric data by pictures

See also: Icon (computing), Ideogram, Pictography, emoticon, Writing system