An
ideogram or
ideograph (from Greek ἰδέα
idea "idea" + γράφω
grapho "to write") is a graphic symbol that represents an idea, rather than a group of letters, arranged according to the phonemes of a spoken language, as is done in alphabetic languages, or a strictly representational picture of a subject as may be done in illustration or photography.
Chinese characters are conventionally called
ideograms, but as each character represents a
morpheme (and is useful almost always as an entire word) rather than an idea, they are more accurately called
logograms.
Within the Chinese linguistic tradition, characters are divided into six categories:
pictograms,
ideograms,
compound indicatives,
phono-semantic compounds,
borrowed characters and
derived characters. The first four are ways characters are composed, while the last two refer to additional methods in which they are used.
Fonts and in-depths:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideogram
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_character_classification
