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Alternating long and short parallel lines, marking a cell or battery.
Also known as: Cell symbol, Battery schematic symbol, Long and short lines symbol
Long and short lines alternating mark a battery, with the long line the positive terminal and the short line the negative. The number of pairs once indicated the number of cells, a convention now used loosely rather than literally.
Marks a battery or single cell: a source of direct current supplying a fixed voltage to a circuit.
Contexts: Electrical equipment
Indicates polarity by line length — the longer line is the positive terminal and the shorter, usually thicker, line is the negative.
Contexts: Electrical equipment
Once used one long-short pair per cell, so a three-pair symbol meant a three-cell battery. Modern schematics generally draw two pairs regardless of the actual cell count and state the voltage in a label instead.
So the pair count should not be read as a cell count on a contemporary diagram without confirming it against the label.
Contexts: Electrical equipment
Says polarity by line length, not by a plus sign. The long thin line is the positive terminal and the short thick line is the negative one, and that convention holds whether or not a plus is drawn. It is the commonest thing to get backwards when copying a schematic by hand.
Contexts: Technical drawing, Electrical equipment
Is one cell, and a battery is several. Strictly the single long-and-short pair is a cell; repeating the pair two or more times draws a battery of cells in series, which is why a nine-volt supply is often drawn as a stack. Modern practice frequently draws the repeated pair for any battery regardless of construction.
Contexts: Technical drawing, Electrical equipment
Related forms that are not treated as separate canonical symbols — see our variant rules.
Multi-cell battery
Two or more long-and-short pairs in a row, marking cells in series. The number of pairs is conventional rather than a literal count of cells.
Two or more pairs of parallel vertical lines of alternating length, long then short, standing in a row across a horizontal wire.
A single long-short pair closely resembles a capacitor's two plates; the difference is that the capacitor's lines are equal in length.