Iconography and Symbols
A tick or a padlock icon—drop it or name it?
✅ NormativeSettled. The requirement holds as written.📄 Page ruleCan be applied from the page alone.Read §7.3.4 in the RFC ↗
An icon that carries meaning MUST NOT be dropped. It MUST be rendered as a bracketed semantic tag
in the icon's position: one lower-case word naming what the icon means — [yes], [no],
[locked] — with : degree where the icons are graded ([water: 3], [sun: partial]), and
[icon: shape] naming the shape
where the meaning is unclear ([icon: sun]). The vocabulary is open: the word is whatever names
the meaning on this page.
When it applies
Small symbols and images that stand in for a value rather than decorate — a tick in a feature-comparison column, a padlock, a sun or water icon used as the cell content itself.
Reading the examples. Each one pairs a source page with the output the rule expects. ✅ Sample: the rule applies. ❌ Counter-sample: it looks like it applies and does not, or a rendering got it wrong. A non-conforming output, in red, is shown only for contrast. … marks content left out of an excerpt.
Rendering
The icon is read the way the page intends it, and that reading is written in brackets:
| Feature | Basic | Pro |
| SSO | [locked] | [yes] |
- Each icon MUST produce one tag, in the position the icon occupies.
- Where an icon has no clear meaning in context, the tag MUST describe what is drawn —
[icon: sun]— rather than guess a value. - Where the icons are graded, the tag MUST carry the degree, not just the presence:
[sun: full]/[sun: partial],[water: 3]/[water: 1]. A tag that distinguishes the values beats a prettier glyph that does not.
Why a tag, and an open vocabulary
A tag reads back unambiguously and does not depend on a glyph existing, where the nearest Unicode character or emoji may not exist or may carry a different meaning. Its word is not drawn from a fixed list: no list would cover every icon, so the word is whatever names the meaning on this page, in lower case, used the same way throughout the document.
Why it matters
When the icon is the value, dropping it empties the table. A feature matrix or a scorecard whose marks are gone says nothing at all. This is the same failure as Color as the Value (§9.6.4), where a coloured fill with no text becomes an empty cell and the table stops meaning anything.
graded icons flattened to one glyph
A plant-list table with two icon-valued columns — Sun and H₂O. The printed page on the left uses graded symbols: a filled, a half-filled or an empty sun, and one, two or three water droplets. The parse preview on the right renders both columns as a single ☀️ and a single 💧.
That is the failure this rule exists to prevent. The icons were not dropped — they were
flattened. A plant needing three droplets and one needing a single droplet come out identical,
so the column still looks populated while the information it carried is gone. The columns are
the whole point of the table: Sun and H₂O are the two facts a reader consults it for. The
expected Markdown reads the empty sun as [sun: none]; the red outlines around the two columns
are highlighting added to the figure, not part of the page.
Source page
Non-conforming output
What the rule rules out.
| Common Name | Size | Sun | H2O | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Marigold | 1' x 1' | ☀️ | 💧 | Full sun, one droplet… |
| Larkspur | 2' x 1' | ☀️ | 💧 | Partial shade, two droplets… |
| Fernwort | 1.5' x 1' | ☀️ | 💧 | Shade only, three droplets… |
| Coastal Sage | 3' x 2' | ☀️ | 💧 | Drought tolerant… |
Expected output · printed table (left)
| Common Name Botanical Name | Size | Sun | H2O | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Marigold Tagetes hybrida | 1' x 1' | [sun: full] | [water: 1] | Full sun, one droplet: light, infrequent watering. |
| Larkspur Consolida ajacis | 2' x 1' | [sun: partial] | [water: 2] | Partial shade, two droplets: moderate, regular watering. |
| Fernwort Pteris umbrosa | 1.5' x 1' | [sun: none] | [water: 3] | Shade only, three droplets: keep evenly moist. |
| Coastal Sage Salvia litoralis | 3' x 2' | [sun: full] | [water: 1] | Drought tolerant once established. |
Icons standing in for labels
An icon that clearly supplies a field's label — a pin before an address, a handset before a phone
number — MUST be rendered as a bracketed semantic label beside its value: [address], [phone],
[web]. The nearest word (Address:) MUST NOT be substituted: it is not printed. An icon whose
function is unclear is described by its shape instead of guessed.
icons standing in for labels
The footer prints a pin, a handset and a globe before the address, the phone number and the
website — no words. The pictorial labels become [address], [phone] and [web] beside their
values.
Source page
Expected output · footer band
PAGE 1 [address] 7 Merevald Circle NW Suite 400 Harrowgate, BV 20036 [phone] 202-555-0180 [web] halvernwlc.example
**PAGE 1** [address] 7 Merevald Circle NW Suite 400 Harrowgate, BV 20036 [phone] 202-555-0180 [web] halvernwlc.exampleNeighbouring rules, and how they differ
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Rule id text-iconography-and-symbols · text images marks