

Power On/Off: Symbology Explained - wallflower
http://www.unplggd.com/unplggd/good-questions/power-onoff-symbology-explained-144370

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mhjerde
It is misguided to expect an intuitive understanding of these symbols. And
they are technically signs, not symbols. They are supposed to be learned and
the primary requisite for their form is that they are easy to distinguish from
other signs. Signs are arbitrary shapes with no innate meaning.

What you are referring to is maybe symbols that have a metaphorical relation
or is an analogy. A symbol made to resemble something "real" that the user
already knows and understands. An email symbol that looks like an envelope, a
document symbol that looks like a piece of paper, you get my drift. The
strange looking symbol for the save command is actually a diskette (look it
up).

Unfortunately, the vast majority of signs have to be learned and can't be
intuited. The letters of the alphabet is an example and so is probably 90% or
more of all the "symbols" around us.

Most computer commands are "abstract" in the sense that they don't have a
representation in nature that we can easily use. What would the symbol for
Stop, Start, Save, Open, etc, be? What would be a good symbol for Power On?
Electric spark? A rising sun? Trouble is that these already have an
established meaning, sometimes religious, and often a different meaning for
different cultures around the world.

The IEC power symbols have a meaning if you are an engineer or coder (the
binary I and 0), but most people won't see that, so they act as signs,

Morten (user experience guy)

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peteforde
Symbology? I'm sure the word you were looking for was "symbolism." What is the
ssss-himbolism there?

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X-Istence
Ah, good ol' Boondock Saints.

Symbology is the study of symbols, whereas symbolism is the use of a symbol to
represent ideas or qualities.

One could say he is studying the symbols to find their symbolism? Or am I
completely butchering the English language at this point? (I disclaim all
responsibility as a foreign national =D)

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Derbasti
I never quite figured out why the non-binary symbols looked the way they do.
Thanks for showing me.

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cleverjake
when I was a kid, I always remembered the difference by thinking of the line
as a pipe that lets electricity flow, and the circle as something blocking
that pipe (and therefore blocking the flow)

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otto
I always thought it was from binary. 1 being on and 0 off.

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Samuel_Michon
According to the article, that's exactly where it came from.

Sadly, the symbols mentioned in the article aren't always used the way they
should. For instance, earlier today there was a link on HN about an HTML5
audio player, Speakker [1], which uses the standby symbol as a play button.
Confuses the hell out of me.

[1] <http://www.speakker.com/demo/>

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X-Istence
If I hadn't read your comment I would have been very confused as well, it made
me pause for a second before clicking.

Either way I wanted to thank you for leading me to some very awesome music
which is available under Creative Commons!

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toast76
How is that I never drew the connection between on/off and binary! So simple!
I must be an engineer.... _facepalm_

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MediaBehavior
I never "saw" the one-penetrating-zero symbol as presenting ones and zeroes. I
bet non-geeks definitely didn't.

I see that as a usability issue. I'm willing to bet that IEC did _no_
usability studies. Compounding the issue... did they do any public-awareness
campaigns? If so, they all missed me :/

Related issue: Menus (my Apple devices/software seem particularly acute) that
don't tell you a current on/off state - but expect you to deduce it from the
fact that (apparently) the option to shift to the _other_ state is available
(non-greyed-out).

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Hemlockz
This Symbolism clicked for me the 3rd year of college for CS, it's not that
intuitive, even if it seems obvious in hindsight

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dipankarsarkar
Was thinking about this the other day ! Thanks for the share

