meaningful assuming preexisting familiarity with some convention; others more directly resemble their signifieds. Ideograms that represent physical objects by visually illustrating 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'.