I'm creating a list of locations/objects, separated into categories. I'd like an "other" category, but I'm struggling to come up with an icon for it. Has someone ever created a generic "other" symbol? Googling this topic is surprisingly difficult.

  • 3
    I was going to say an ellipsis, but apparently two others have already agreed with me. I'd say you have your answer there... – Manly Aug 12 '16 at 16:25
  • thenounproject.com/search/?q=other – joojaa Aug 12 '16 at 18:45

Although I am no expert on the matter, I ran into the same problem a while ago. There is indeed no generic icon for this, sadly.

What I could come up with:

  • using three dots. This is often used to indicate 'more' or 'continue'.
  • using visual icons of what 'other' things you are showing. If you are a fashion shop listing dresses, pants, shirts and others, you could use jewelry and shoes to describe 'other'.

I could find no symbol, icon, or glyph dedicated to represent "other" specifically.

Ellipsis () is a punctuation mark that indicates the omission from speech or writing of a word or words that are superfluous or able to be understood from contextual clues. In that respect, the mark could be taken to mean "other."

The Apple Computer Company uses a "clover-leaf" () symbol to mean other in the sense of an alternate use or direction. Originally, it was used to indicate places of interest sites on european tourist maps. In function, it replaces the "ALT" key found on "Windows" computer operating systems. It has a strong "Apple" association.

Recently, the triple-bar (trigram) symbol ☰ has been used to indicate the presence of a supplementary "Menu" of other choices on mobile smart phone touch screens. Tapping the symbol will present "other" possible actions to be taken.

There is a possibility you might want to create and brand a symbol for your purposes.


How about three dots in a horizontal line?

Even Stackexchange uses these little dots to define "other".


While the following suggestions are actually text, they are sufficiently short to work as symbols. (Also, three dots are text as well in some sense.)

  • etc.
  • et al., short for Latin et alii/aliae/alia – and others – this abbreviation is typically used to indicate an incomplete list of authors in an academic context and will thus be understood by respective users. To make it quadratic and compact, the letters could be arranged like this:


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