We'd like to use analytics cookies to understand which symbols people look up, so we know what to research next. They are not used for advertising and we set none of them unless you say yes. What we store.
The same three dots turned through a right angle, with no agreed difference in what they do.
Vertical is the kebab, horizontal the meatball. That is the whole distinction, and it is a distinction in drawing rather than in meaning: both open a menu of secondary actions, and which one a product uses is house style. The food names are designer folklore, not terminology anybody defines.
The same three dots turned through a right angle. Vertical is the kebab, horizontal the meatball, and which appears where is a matter of house style rather than meaning.
Drawn from the visual attributes recorded for each symbol. Only traits the two records disagree about are listed.
| Trait | Kebab menu symbol | Meatball menu symbol |
|---|---|---|
| Symmetry | vertical | horizontal |
| Kebab menu symbol | Meatball menu symbol | |
|---|---|---|
| Orientation | Vertical | Horizontal |
| What it opens | A menu of further actions | A menu of further actions |
| Agreed difference in meaning | None | None |
| Named by | Designers, informally | Designers, informally |
| Relationship (from Symbolwise's records) | Commonly confused with Meatball menu symbol — The same three dots turned through a right angle. Vertical is the kebab, horizontal the meatball, and which appears where is a matter of house style rather than meaning. | Commonly confused with Kebab menu symbol — The same three dots turned through a right angle, with no agreed difference in meaning. |
Wikipedia · retrieved 2026-08-01
Tertiary reference. Used for widely-agreed identity, origin and current use, not for contested detail or exact dates.
Wikipedia · retrieved 2026-08-01
Tertiary reference. Used for widely-agreed identity, origin and current use, not for contested detail or exact dates.
In code, three dots before a value expand it into its elements. In an interface, three dots in a row open a menu of further actions. Both are described as 'three dots' by the people who meet them, which is the entire basis of the confusion — there is no relationship between the two.
Both are drawn as one continuous decorative stroke with a closed loop and a tail that crosses back over itself, which is why a description of the shape alone reaches both. The clef is far taller, spans a stave, and its spiral encircles one specific line — that encircled line is the note G, and it is the only reason the shape is drawn where it is.
The ampersand is a ligature of the Latin word et, still visible in some italic forms where the e and the t can be picked out. The Tironian et is a separate mark descending from a Roman shorthand, shaped like a small seven, and it is in daily public use in Ireland as the written form of 'agus'. A reader who knows only the ampersand takes the other for a numeral, which on a bilingual road sign produces a confidently wrong place name.
A building's assembly point is a safe place to stand once you are outside. A ship's muster station is a staffed step in a procedure: you are counted against a roll, briefed, and if necessary allocated to a survival craft, which is why it has a letter or a number and appears on your cabin door card. Both are green, both show grouped figures, and both are called an assembly point in ordinary speech — and treating a muster station as somewhere merely to wait is the misunderstanding drills exist to correct.