Speech balloons (also
speech bubbles,
dialogue balloons or
word balloons) are a graphic convention used most commonly in
comic books,
comics and
cartoons to allow words (and much less often, pictures) to be understood as representing the speech or thoughts of a given character in the comic. There is often a formal distinction between the balloon that indicates thoughts and the one that indicates words spoken aloud: the balloon that conveys subjective thoughts is often referred to as a
thought bubble.