Ideogram

An ideogram or ideograph (from Greek idéa 'idea' + gráphō 'to write') is a symbol that represents an idea or concept independent of any particular language. Some ideograms are more arbitrary than others: some are only meaningful assuming preexisting familiarity with some convention; others more directly resemble their signifieds. Ideograms that represent physical objects by visually resembling them are called pictograms.

• Numerals and mathematical symbols are ideograms, for example ⟨1⟩ 'one', ⟨2⟩ 'two', ⟨+⟩ 'plus', and ⟨=⟩ 'equals'.
• The ampersand ⟨&⟩ is used in many languages to represent the word and, originally a stylized ligature of the Latin word et.
• Other typographical examples include ⟨§⟩ 'section', ⟨€⟩ 'euro', ⟨£⟩ 'pound sterling', and ⟨©⟩ 'copyright'.

Ideograms are not to be equated with logograms, which represent specific morphemes in a language. In a broad sense, ideograms may form part of a writing system otherwise based on other principles, like the examples above in the phonetic English writing system—while also potentially representing the same idea across several languages, as they do not correspond to a specific spoken word. There may not always be a single way to read a given ideograph. While remaining logograms assigned to morphemes, specific Chinese characters like ⟨中⟩ 'middle' may be classified as ideographs in a narrower sense, given their origin and visual structure.