Ideogram

The term ideography shown here is not identical to the concept idiography.

Ideography or tomography (also: idea-writing ) (Greek for " conceptual notation ") is a font in which the characters are not abstract signs, but stylized images are, but not for the depicted object, but for a related idea / idea. stand Examples of Ideographic writings are, for example, the Chinese or the European number system. Also at the Ideographien include the writings of the Indians ( as picture-writings ) and elements of the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic writing. Also in the cuneiform such element exists.

A font is called ideographic, when it is not the concept of an action or of an object by the individual sounds of a word, but uses its own character for the entire term. If the action or the object itself reproduced as an image, is an icon, otherwise, if the shape of the sign is arbitrary to an ideogram. Pictograms are usually viewed as a subgroup of ideograms, so either pictograms or ideograms are " arbitrary / conventional" (arbitrary ) character without similarity to the represented concept.

Ideograms

An ideogram (also: term mark, ideographic characters, symbols ) is a character, which stands and thus forms the basis of an ideographic script for whole words or concepts. However ideograms can only parts of writings constitute, as for example in German the number characters such as " 1" or " 2" and the character "% " (percent), "§" (paragraph ) or " € " ( euro sign).

Conventionalized ideograms, as used for example at traffic signs are not limited to a single use of language, since this is not about characters, which express the meaning of utterances systematically.