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The squares, circles and connecting lines of a formal family diagram.
Also known as: Pedigree diagram, Family chart with squares and circles, Genetic family chart
A genuinely codified system, unlike the inline date symbols. Clinical genetics maintains a published standard for it, because a pedigree chart is used to reason about inheritance and an ambiguous chart is a clinical hazard.
Standardised by the National Society of Genetic Counselors and revised periodically. Unlike the customary date symbols this is a published, enforced nomenclature, because a chart that can be read two ways is a clinical risk.
Hobbyist family trees borrow the shapes loosely without following the standard, so the same square may carry the full clinical meaning or none of it depending on who drew the chart.
Only a chart drawn to the standard can be read by the standard.
Rows of small squares and circles joined by horizontal and vertical straight lines, with the earliest generation at the top.
The shapes are the chart's basic vocabulary.