A pictograph is a simple picture or symbol that represents a word, idea, or object. Ancient civilizations used pictographs as one of the earliest forms of writing: a small drawing of a sun meant “sun,” a stick figure might mean “person,” and wavy lines could mean “water.” Egyptian hieroglyphics include many pictographs, like a bird symbol that represented a bird and also stood for certain sounds.

Pictographs differ from the alphabet you're reading right now. The letter “S” doesn't look like anything in particular, it just represents a sound. But a pictograph actually looks like what it means. Even today, when you see a restroom sign with a simple figure of a person, or a “no campfire” sign showing flames with a line through it, you're looking at modern pictographs.

In math class, you might create a pictograph as a way to display data: if each small apple drawing represents five apples sold, and you draw four apples, you're showing that 20 apples were sold. This type of chart makes numbers easy to understand at a glance.