What is this called: *&%$#! Does it have a name? You know, when comic strips use symbols in place of curse?

Question

words? Is it called something?

Answer 1

Found it: grawlixes!


this is such a great question...!!
one that makes you think.. whether you know/knew the answer... or never heard it and learn something new... anyway....
I know I have heard the term for it..
there is one that artists use... and for the life of me? I can not remember it right now...
I found only this, so far.... it is really gonna bug me though.... lol.. that is a sign of a GREAT question.....
I will keep looking!

copy/paste and link to page found on;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_bubble

Drawings within the speech bubble

In the Western world, it is common to replace profanity with a string of nonsense symbols (&%$@*$#), leaving the reader to work out the meaning from the context. In comics that are usually addressed to children or teenagers, bad language is censored by replacing it with more or less elaborate drawings and expressionistic symbols. For example, instead of calling someone a swine, a pig is drawn in the speech bubble.
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added almost seven hours later:
okay, spent some more time researching this.. I KNEW there was a term used! link is at bottom here is a copy/paste of term and meaning;

Grawlixes
The typographical symbols that stand for profanities, which appear in dialogue balloons in the place of actual dialogue

The Lexicon of Comicana is a book that was written in 1980 by American cartoonist Mort Walker. It was intended as a tongue-in-cheek look at the devices cartoonists utilize in their craft. In it, Walker invented an international set of symbols called Symbolia after researching cartoons around the world. In 1964, Walker had written an article called "Let's Get Down to Grawlixes," a satirical piece for the National Cartoonists Society. Walker used terms such as grawlixes for his own amusement, but they soon began to catch on and acquired an unexpected validity. The Lexicon was written in response to this fact.

The names he invented for them sometimes appear in dictionaries and serve as convenient terminology occasionally used by cartoonists. A 2001 gallery showing of comic- and street-influenced art in San Francisco, for example, was called "Plewds! Squeams! and Spurls!"


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lexicon_of_Comicana

thank you for your patience while I hunted this down
hope it helps

Answer 2

I’d call it “cartoon profanity”. There is no correspondence of the symbols to English letters, they are not spelling out the dirty words using a code or leetspeek; if that is what you were wondering.

6 MAR 07, 0156 hrs, GMT.

Answer 3

Hmmmm...that's a good question. It's not quite a minced oath, but something like it ... Hmmm....if I find the name of it, I'll edit my post. For more on a minced oath, see this Wikipedia entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minced_oath

That's not quite it, but it is interesting...

Answer 4

I've never heard of a term for that.