speech balloon
Sign in to saveAlso known as speech bubble, cartoon bubble, dialogue balloon, word balloon
graphic convention in comics for representing speech
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- convention
- Subclass of
- symbol
- Part of
- comics
- Named after
- balloon
- Depicts
- thought
- Creator
- Purita Campos
- Image
- BlackTerror2504 (cropped).jpg
Show 5 more facts
- equivalent class
- comicmeta.org/cbo/Balloon
- Commons category
- Speech balloons
- Unicode character
- 🗨
- shape
- oval
- contains
- text
Sources (1)
via Wikidata · CC0
~19 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Speech balloons in a 1948 US comic strip
Speech balloons (also speech bubbles, dialogue balloons, or word balloons) are a graphic convention used most commonly in comic books, comics, and cartoons to allow words (and much less often, pictures) to be understood as representing a character's speech or thoughts. A formal distinction is often made between the balloon that indicates speech and the one that indicates thoughts; the balloon that conveys thoughts is often referred to as a thought bubble or conversation cloud.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “speech balloon” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.