SYMBOLS.com: About


	1. General information on SYMBOLS.com 2. Awards 3. The definition of 'symbol' 1. General information on SYMBOLS.com SYMBOLS.com is the online version of Carl G Liungman's book Thought Signs (IOS Press, ISBN 90 5199 197 5). The subtitle of the book is "The semiotics of Symbols---Western Non-pictorial Ideograms", which fairly describes its contents. An offline version, SYMBOLS '98 Encyclopedia, is also available at this web site. SYMBOLS.com is published by HME Media, Stockholm, Sweden. You can reach us at: HME Media Ståltrådsvägen 13 SE-168 68 Bromma Sweden Phone: +46 8 25 39 39 or +46 70 42 42 999 Fax: +46 8 612 39 80 Web site: http://www.hme.se (in Swedish) E-mail: tobias@hme.se Click here to send comments directly to Carl G Liungman or HME Media, via the WWW. You may also visit Carl G Liungman's web site at welcome.to/cgl. 2. Awards

	IPL Resource of the Week [9/3/98] Yahoo! Picks of the Week: "[SYMBOLS.com is] manna from heaven..." [20/4/98] Net Scout Report Selection [10/4/98] Our Square Site of the Week: "If there were a Guinness Book of world records for web sites, this would be under thorough" [4/5/98] The book Thought Signs was highly praised when it first was published in USA: Choice: Outstanding Academic Books 1993 RASD/ALA: Outstanding Reference Source 1993 Library Journal: Best Reference Books 1991 3. The definition of "symbol" The word symbol is derived from the Greek word symbolon. In ancient Greece it was a custom to break a slate of burned clay into several pieces and distribute them within the group. When the group reunited the pieces were fitted together (Greek symbollein). This confirmed the members belonging to the group. An ideogram is a special type of symbol, a graphic sign for an idea or concept. For instance, the graph represents the G-clef in musical notation and the switch for treble range on sound reproducing appliances. It is therefore an ideogram. Alphabetic letters are not considered ideograms proper in this work. But as the first letter in the alphabet A not only is a sign for a specific sound, but also denotes the idea of something that comes first. Consider expressions like "A grade" and "A-team". A may therefore be regarded as a sign. A sign is called iconic if it has some perceivable likeness to what it denotes. In the opposite case, it is called aniconic. However, whether iconic or aniconic, graphical symbols and signs that are not pictures of easily recognized objects are called non-pictorial. These non-pictorial symbols and signs are the subject matter of SYMBOLS.com.