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Meaning of Speech Bubbles in Comics

Last Updated on July 1, 2024 by Ilka Perea Hernández

The visual tool used to represent the characters’ speech, dialogue, or conversation in the comics is known as a “bubble”. The meaning of speech bubbles in comics will be addressed, emphasizing their proper use and comic grammar.

Table of Contents

Speech Bubbles

What are speech bubbles, different kinds of speech bubble, normal speech, electronic devices, extended speech, some insights, what do you think, cite this post.

One of the most important parts of comics is the character dialogue. It is one of the  features of comics  and it is as valuable as the images themselves. They are a great support for the narrative within the comics.

As part of the visual language of comics, bubbles are small expressions in themselves, with their own meaning. They can communicate in a situation or context. Therefore, it is important to know the meaning of speech bubbles in comics to know how to express emotions in a dialogue, nature, the source of the speech, and sounds, for instance.

Certainly, speech bubbles are usually added after the editing and photography of the images. However, at this point in  the process of making a comic , you must have the text included inside the bubbles. The extension of the text must be set during the scriptwriting process, as well as the type of bubble to be used. Therefore, knowing the meaning of speech bubbles in comics ensures a better choice of each one to correctly communicate the message you want to convey.

Creative Process of Making Comics

There are different kinds of speech bubbles because there are different ways that a character could dialogue or communicate a message in a comic. There are some examples:

The “basic” bubble — which often has an oval shape — is used for normal character speech. The “tail” of the bubble should generally point towards the speaker, particularly towards his mouth or the area that produces the sound.

Vertical bubbles can be used when there is not enough horizontal space.  Therefore, this provides flexibility in distributing the bubbles within the panel.

Most of the time, this kind of bubble has an oval shape. However, it can have different shapes.

To express a thought, an idea, or that one is daydreaming, the bubble with a cloud shape is the right one. Besides, the shape can also be oval, like the basic one. But its tail is formed by a group of circles, or ellipses. For example, there are 2 or 3 circles.

Besides, this bubble serves to communicate what animals, plants, or things cannot say, as they “do not talk”. For example, the meow of a cat or the bark of a dog could be represented by onomatopoeias. However, to express their internal dialogue, you can use the cloud bubble.

Rectangular bubbles without a tail are known as captions. They express what the narrator says in such a way that they support the course of the story. In other words, this space describes, in words, a given situation that would not be attributed to a character. Sometimes they are appreciated as voice-overs. Likewise, they are used for subtitles.

Multi-edged bubbles usually represent screaming or a message out loud, but the screams may have a positive or negative connotation. For example, the character is urging his team to try harder. However, the same bubble can be used to insult or express abuse.

Depending on the connotation of the message, either negative or positive, the text in its content may have variations in style: bold, larger, or different colors, for instance.

On the other hand, this bubble can also vary in shape, depending on the intensity of the emotion to be expressed and the style of the comics.

This is used to represent words or sounds coming from an electronic device such as a television, telephone, radio, or microphone. The tail of the bubble points towards the device, and it looks like lightning. In addition, it can be used for robot and hologram dialogs.

Whispers are presented with a dashed-lined bubble. However, it also represents saying a secret or speaking in a very low voice. Certainly, the shapes can also vary for greater flexibility.

The wavy bubble indicates that the speaker is suffering from physical weakness. Likewise, it indicates that a character is exhausted, semi-unconscious, or about to faint. So, its wavy shape reflects the weakness of the character’s voice.

• If the speech or dialogue is too long or a pause is required, the text is distributed into extended speech bubbles.

Moreover, the extended speech bubble has variations. Dialogues can be interleaving but use a bridge that links the speech bubbles of the same character.

• Speech bubbles represent the characters’ dialogue or thoughts.
• Normal speech is often represented by an oval-shaped bubble.
• To express a thought or an idea, the bubble with a cloud shape is the right one.
• Rectangular bubbles without a tail are known as captions.
• Multi-edged bubbles usually represent screaming or sending a message out loud.
• The bubble, whose tail looks like a flash of lightning, is used to represent words or sounds coming from an electronic device.
• Whispers are presented with a dashed-lined bubble.
• The wavy bubble indicates that the speaker is suffering from physical weakness.

Comics are not just a piece of entertainment for children and teenagers. This massive medium is appreciated and understood by adults as well. Marketing agencies and advertising companies have understood this and have started to use it to attract potential customers.

In conclusion, the narrative power of comics can be exploited in graphic design to communicate ideas interestingly and differently. Learning the meaning of speech bubbles in comics is one of the first steps. If graphic designers want to take advantage of the full potential of comics, it is necessary to understand the concepts and features of comics and their different genres. It is also necessary to follow the process of creating a comic in order to develop a story through this format.

In the comments section, tell me if you already knew these bubbles and their meanings. Do you know other bubbles?

• APA Style: Perea Hernandez, I. (2019, August 15). Meaning of speech bubbles in comics. Retrieved from https://ilkaperea.com/2019/08/15/meaning-of-speech-bubbles-in-comics/
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Bibliography

• Acevedo Fernández, J. (2019). Para hacer historietas.  Instituto de Estudios Peruanos.
• Labarre, N. (2020). Understanding Genres in Comics (Palgrave Studies in Comics and Graphic Novels). Editorial Palgrave Pivot.
• McCloud, S. (2006). Making Comics: Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga and Graphic Novels. William Morrow Paperbacks.
• Stevenson, J. (2020).  How to Draw Manga (Includes Anime, Manga and Chibi) Part 2 Drawing Manga Figures. Editorial Golden Valley Press.

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Text Bubbles And Their Variations

• August 21, 2022

In this article, we are going to discover what are text bubbles, and what do their variations represent. You will learn what are the parts of a text bubbles, and how these can be modified to render different voice effects.

Note that I will focus primarily on text bubbles used in manga, but this content shall remain valid for comics and bandes dessinées.

What is a text bubble?

A text bubble is a mechanism used in comics to render speech. This can be used to image the speech of characters or sentences pronounced by a narrator.

A text bubble generally consists of a shape that will contain the text being spoken and that floats around the speaker, like a soap bubble. That shape will vary according to different parameters we are going to see.

Speech bubbles

In the case of characters talking, text bubbles will be called speech bubbles.

As an artistic representation of speech variations, speech bubbles can be found under a lot of forms. These will be a mix of the artist’s style and standards that have been defined against time.

Speech bubbles can be distinguished from narrative bubbles because of their tail. The tail is a protrusion that extends from the bubble and points toward the speaker. It helps identifying who is telling the content of the bubble when different characters are present in a panel.

Narrative bubbles

In the case of narration, text bubbles will more specifically called narrative bubbles.

Narrative bubbles generally have a rectangular shape. Some artists will add some ornaments to make them evoke something specific to the context of their story, but most of the time they will just appear as plain rectangles.

How can artists render different effect with a speech bubble?

A speech bubble contains 3 graphical elements:

• The shape of the bubble
• The font used in the bubble
• The tail of the bubble

Along with the drawing of the characters’ expressions, the use of different shapes and font weights can quickly make readers hearing the voice of the characters.

And nowadays, with the wide-spreading of manga, comic and bandes dessinées around the world, many of these variations are wired into our heads. People learn to interpret them from a very young age, which makes it easy to use these variations and trigger sensations in readers’ mind.

We are now going to see what are these common text bubble variations we can find in manga.

Rendering the speech volume

One way artists use variations of the text bubbles is to render the sensation of the volume of the voice.

These variations make it easy for the readers to know when someone has a loud voice, or is shouting or whispering.

The normal voice

As a baseline, here is how we draw a text bubble for someone speaking at a normal tone:

• a round bubble (even though in old times artists used rounded square ones),
• with a pointy tail,
• and text using a normal font.

This is your standard text bubble.

The loud voice

To express a louder voice than normal, we can simply make the font of a normal speech bubble either bigger, or bold, or both. You can feel that sensation by quickly reading the bubble in the previous image, and then the one in the next image.

The low voice

We can also render a low voice in a similar manner by using a smaller font size.

The difficulty to read the text will echo with the difficulty to hear the voice. This is as if you had to get closer to the character to “hear” what he is saying.

The whisper

When someone is whispering, artists will commonly use a normal speech bubble and tail, with a dashed outline.

As you can see, the effect can be reinforced by making the character kind of being secret.

The shouting bubble

To image that someone is shouting, the shape of the bubble is changed into a shape with big spikes. This somehow evokes the fact that a shouting voice can be piercing your ears.

Note the way it is done in manga is different from what can be found in old comics. In manga, the line between two spikes in generally curved.

It is also possible in a manga to render screams and louder voices. To achieve this, artists will simply increase the size the bubble, and reduce the size of the speaker. This is intended to give the impression that the sound can be heard from a large distance, like miles away, or across the galaxy.

We have seen how we can represent the volume of the voice using the different attributes of the text bubble. Now, let’s see how we can render other voice tones.

Soft / mellow / happy voices

Manga artists use cloud-like shaped bubbles for many purposes. Because this cloud-like shape can evoke a cloud, a sheep’s wool or a flower, it is associated with either softness/mellowness, daydreaming or happiness.

Note that the tail remains spiky. This is what makes it different from the text bubbles used to express thoughts or dreams.

Thoughts/internal speech and dreams

Artists represent text bubbles for thoughts and dreams in a really similar way:

• A cloud shaped bubble
• A tail made of circles

The main difference between a text bubble representing thoughts and one representing a dream is that the first one will contain text, whereas the second one will be using images to represent the content of the dream.

But it is also common to find in manga the use of a text bubble made of radiating rays, with no tail, to indicate thoughts or internal speech:

Angry voice

In order to evoke the effect of an angry voice, manga artists will add little spikes to the bubble’s shape. These spikes represent the hostility of anger towards people around.

The spikes of an angry voice are less pronounced than the ones of a shouting voice. This allows the use of both types of spikes at the same time to express an angry shouting voice.

Hesitation and fear

In general, hesitation and fear might come with a shaking voice. For that purpose, manga artists use speech bubbles with a wavy outline to evoke the fluttering or the shaking of the voice under stress.

The infinite variety of text bubbles

There are many more text bubble variations, and it would take pages and pages to list all of them. But with the ones above, you have the ones that are most commonly found in manga.

But artists have found many other ways to evoke more subtile sensations. Ornaments can be added to the bubbles to add more subtleties. Fonts can be changed to evoke languages and speech accents…

I hope you found this article useful ad instructive.

Do not hesitate if you have any comment or question!

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Speech Bubbles

"So Deadpool speaks with a yellow outline around his speech balloons? What exactly is that supposed to sound like? I can just imagine a movie studio trying to cast someone for the role of Deadpool: Must be able to speak English clearly with yellow outline around dialogue. Red outline voices need not apply! " — Marvel Year in Review 1993 note  According to Cable , Deadpool has a "gravelly, Demi Moore -like voice" which the coloring of the bubble is meant to represent; also, as the coloring switched to digital, Deadpool's speech bubbles switched to entirely light yellow, although with the same effect. Also, someone eventually did get cast as Deadpool in a movie.

At their most basic, Speech Bubbles are floating text circles (or other shapes ) that characters in Comic Books and Webcomics or other dimensionally-challenged media use to communicate.

But Speech Bubbles aren't only generic circles or places to put words; they're metafictional constructs that can be painted, shaped , and written different ways!

Usually the speech bubbles have the following meanings depending on the shape and color:

• Normal speech bubbles : Normal character speech
• Rectangular speech bubbles with lightning bolt arrow : Mechanical voices
• Superimposed bubbles : Interruption . Different characters can be given different shapes or colors of bubble, making keeping track of who is speaking easier, as well as how they're feeling.
• Speech bubble with inwards arrow : Offscreen character speech. More common in manga than in western media.
• Speech bubbles with dotted lines : Whispering
• Speech bubbles with outward spikes : Screaming and yelling
• Spiky bubbles, often with lightning arrow : Announcements
• Fluffy speech bubbles with circles instead of arrow : Thinking. Also known as thought bubbles.
• Drooping speech bubbles with shadows : Menacing speech
• Slightly wavy speech bubbles : Weak speech
• Black speech bubbles : Some villains and monsters like to use black speech balloons and strange colored text

If any character needs a subtly menacing tone to their speech, then it can be rendered in a black speech balloon with either white or red text (the latter maybe implying more anger). Also, madness can be indicated with mangled text, and foreign languages or accents with exotic fonts.

See Pictorial Speech-Bubble for when a Speech Bubble contains only symbols rather than words, and Rebus Bubble for when this is specifically used like a rebus puzzle. Speech-Bubble Censoring covers strategic placement of speech bubbles to preserve characters' modesty.     open/close all folders 

• The use of Halos in Western religious art was, at least in part, to function as Speech Bubbles, putting the prayers of angels or famous Papal quotations as written text on the Halo itself.
• Most comics use different forms of speech bubble to represent telepathy, internal dialogue, phone calls etc., etc.
• Black Orchid 's balloon texts always have a very faint purple colouring, indicating that while she might appear human, she most certainly doesn't qualify as one.
• In Season 8 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer , Warren speaks with irregular and somewhat-squiggly bubbles and Twilight talks in a different font.
• The Invisibles uses speech bubbles to good effect.
• Several characters in The Sandman (1989) have distinctive speech bubbles or fonts — each of the Endless and Matthew, in particular. At one point, Matthew "imitates" Morpheus with a speech bubble that looks like his. Delirium's speech bubbles contain wild swirls of color and wavering text, but when she was Delight (and sane), the colors were subdued and straight, and the text linear. Death is the sanest and most down-to-earth of the Endless and the only one whose Speech Bubbles are completely normal.
• Jamie Madrox's duplicates in X-Factor get slightly different fonts from standard speech bubbles.
• The language of the Goths is represented by a Gothic font, Greeks speak in an angular font resembling the Greek alphabet, and Egyptian speech bubbles contain hieroglyph-style rebuses (even for onomatopoeia). When Obelix repeats a phrase in Egyptian, it looks like a shakily-drawn stick figure.
• Asterix and the Cauldron features a Roman tax gatherer whose rectangular speech bubbles resembles modern tax forms, complete with check boxes.
• In Asterix and the Roman Agent , anyone falling under the discord-sowing powers of Convulvus (the titular agent) gets a speech bubble tinted green. When Obelix's anger subsides, his bubbles become progressively whiter.
• When our heroes complain to the camp cook about the army food in Asterix the Legionary , the cook responds with mocking sweetness, before yelling his head off. While he's being nice, his speech bubbles are filled with smiling suns, flowers, singing birds and music notes.
• In Asterix and Caesar's Gift , when Vitalstatistix and Orthopaedix introduce their respective wives, Impedimenta and Angina, to each other, the wives say "Pleased to meet you" to each other in irregularly-shaped bubbles with icicles and snow dripping off them.
• Nearly every important character in Watchmen has either a different color/style speech bubble, or a different font. Sometimes both.
• Martian Manhunter is usually depicted with a wavy tail to his bubbles, and rarely a wobbly edge to the circle, though what exactly that represents is uncertain.
• The Vision traditionally spoke with a square bubble to indicate a cold, robotic voice. In recent years, they have been redesigned to be round, with points cut into the top, bottom, and both sides. They're also used for all synthezoids, like his daughter.
• Thor's font is used for any Asgardian character; even his cyborg clone Ragnarok, and Beta Ray Bill , an alien who uses a copy of his powers, use it.
• This style of speech bubble is used with different colorations for anyone wearing similar armor.
• Ultron has been given rectangular shaped bubbles a lot in more modern times, and Jocasta, one of his creations and a mainstay of the Mighty Avengers lineup, speaks with a font that seems like Comic Sans/Arial as opposed to normal lettering.
• In Great Lakes Avengers Deathurge speaks with all black Speech Bubbles, as does Doorman after he takes up Deathurge's mantle. And actually it's a generally kept convention that death-related or demonic characters get black bubbles.
• Super-Skrull speaks with green Speech Bubbles in Annihilation : Super-Skrull .
• Speaking of Annihilation , in the Drax The Destroyer tie in all aliens speaking in their native tongues get weird bubbles plus in the series proper Annihilus gets purple ones, Tenebrous gets black ones, Aegis gets red ones, and The Xandarian Worldmind gets square ones with a yellow border.
• Thanos speaks in rugged speech bubbles with thick black outlines.
• Depending on the writer, various characters have distinctive font and speech bubble styles, including Ben Grimm (pretty much all the time) and Johnny Storm (whose speech bubbles take on a fiery appearance when he's using his powers) ; and Wolverine , particularly when berserk .
• With enough experience the conventions do sometimes double as Interface Spoiler . For example: Black bubble with Asgardian font? Gee... could it be Hela?!
• It's also worth mentioning that in the early stories, before Humans and Elves learned to understand each other's languages, human language (which sounded ugly to the elves) was represented by rough, angular speech bubbles instead of the neatly rounded speech bubbles normally used when the elves were speaking.
• In PS238 , aspiring supervillain and world conqueror Zodon has a chip inserted into his head to make him stop cussing all the time. The innocuous words that replace his attempts to swear are rendered in a blocky font. When he really goes caroling ape- beans , he starts singing show tunes.
• In Atomic Robo the titular character's speech bubbles are blue with small zig-zags on both sides and have a lightning bolt shaped tail. Helsingard as a Brain in a Jar has brown square bubbles. Everyone has a jagged outline over a radio and a dotted one when they're whispering.
• Transformers: Generation 2 introduced computer-generated text bubbles courtesy of Richard Starkings and Comicraft, giving the Autobots and Decepticons very distinct fonts, and colored panels along the left side of the bubbles corresponding with the characters' colors. Autobots had square panels and a clean-looking font, while Decepticons had triangles and a harsher, more angular font. The Dinobots, being rougher than the regular Autobots, had trapezoidal panels (with the occasional triangle) but otherwise used the Autobot font.
• Subsequent series from other publishers have experimented with different styles with different effects, such as Megatron in Dreamwave's third volume speaking in black speech bubbles with white text. Most recently, the IDW books tended to just use standard speech bubbles. Starting from around issue 14 of The Transformers: Robots in Disguise , Combiners get uniquely coloured speech bubbles based on the subject's own colour-scheme (so Devestator gets green bubbles with purple font). After Dark Cybertron , Bludgeon starts speaking in black bubbles with white text, a trait shared by Onyx Prime . Centurion, from Revolutionaries , speaks with the squared speech bubbles of Furman's era (matching the bubbles from the series he was "introduced" in, Hearts of Steel ).
• In Teri Sue Wood's Wandering Star , all the characters have elaborately hand-drawn dialogue, except for a group of mind-controlled slaves; theirs is typewritten.
• Normal humans as well as the titular character of Hellboy have white speech bubbles with standard comic book font and short trails. Demons and horrors generally have red or purple speech bubles with longer, wavy trails and sharp letters. Aquatic creatures have blue speech bubbles. The demon Ualac goes from normal white bubbles to wavy golden ones when he becomes the beast of the apocalypse .
• Disney had for a time comics about baby versions of their characters. Baby Gyro Gearloose spoke in speech bubbles outlined by equations and formulas. Considering Gyro is an inventor as well as terribly scatterbrained, it probably represents that his mind's elsewhere while he's talking.
• This is quite a common gag in many comics.
• The biochips in Rogue Trooper have sort of semi-circular indentations in the edges of their bubbles.
• In Atavar , the Uos' speech bubbles are square and all their dialogue is bold . In the first few panels, before Atavar gains the ability to speak their language, the Kalen's dialogue is represented by random Greek letters.
• The speech bubbles in Cerebus the Aardvark could be incredibly expressive and as artistic as anything else that was going on in the comic, especially when Cerebus was drunk, mad, or having an argument with himself.
• Null of Halcyon seems to "speak" through black narration boxes with white text, which doesn't stop anyone from hearing him. The font also changes when characters are speaking in a foreign language, à la Discworld .
• Since an assassination attempt in a hacked virtual reality simulation, Ramone Dexter has become aware of his own thought bubbles.
• Norby : The backgrounds of the bubbles in this series switch between white and yellow to help them stand out against the background, which also tends to switch between those two colours (other colours, too, but predominantly white and yellow).
• Black Hammer has distinctive speech bubbles for several of the characters. Colonel Weird's speech bubbles have a wavy border and light grey text to reflect that he's physically and mentally not all there. Talky-Walky has grey speech bubbles with a square border and bolded, blocky text to reflect her robotic nature. And Anti-God has black speech bubbles with a red border and text to emphasize his evilness. Everyone else uses normal speech bubbles.
• Hound : Morrigan's lines of dialogue are rendered in mixed case with a unique font.
• This has been in the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip a few times. Most notably, the distinctive voice-treatment given to Daleks is represented as an angular font in a jagged speech bubble. This has been the case since they had their own strip in TV Century 21 in the 1960s.
• In Don Rosa 's early The Pertwillaby Papers series, nearly every character had their own specific font and speech bubble design, reflecting their personalities. The tradition carried over to his Scrooge McDuck stories in part later on.
• In Pogo , P. T. Bridgeport spoke in circus posters, Deacon Mushrat used Olde Englishe lettering, and Sarcophagus MacAbre (the natural-born buzzard) spoke like a sympathy note.
• Manfred Schmidt, author of German comic Nick Knatterton , commented that they were a primitive tool in his POV — "bubbles coming from the heads, eyes, ears, noses or mouths of characters to indicate what they think, see, hear, smell or say".
• On Calvin and Hobbes , The Bully Moe has crudely-written text in lowercase letters for his bubbles to indicate how dumb he is. When aliens or robots appear, their bubbles are rectangular and have electronic fonts.
• The 1925 silent film The Unholy Three has a rare use of this trope in a live-action film. A con man, who used to be a ventriloquist and is now selling birds at a pet store, is tricking customers into thinking his parrots can talk by throwing his voice. Since this was a silent film, it gets this effect across by having speech bubbles pop up above the various caged parrots saying parrot things like "Pretty Polly".
• The Three Stooges short " I Can Hardly Wait " uses a thought bubble when Curly first starts dreaming, showing his dream inside the thought bubble for a few seconds before going to full screen.
• Discussed in When Harry Met Sally... . Harry is telling Jess about his marital troubles. His wife Helen had said she wants a trial separation. Harry: Then she tells me that somebody in her office is going to South America and she can sub-let his apartment. I can't believe this, and the doorbell rings, 'I can sub-let his apartment', the words are still hanging in the air, you know, like in a balloon attached to a mouth. Jess: Like in the cartoon. Harry: Right. So I go to the door, and there were moving men there.
• Funeral Parade of Roses : A deeply weird use of this trope. The Cat Fight between Leda and Eddie has the movie going into silent film mode for a second, with Leda and Eddie hurling insults like "Bitch!" and "Whore!" at each other via speech bubbles spilling out of their mouths.
• Death Note does this, at least in the English manga. The shinigami speak in a different font than the human characters.
• Doraemon : In "A World Without Sound" , the characters' thoughts are displayed in bubbles. Their thoughts are rendered in a different font than their spoken dialogue.
• D.N.Angel uses this trope as well. Dark speaks in a curly fancy kind of font.
• The font in speech bubbles in Fullmetal Alchemist is usually static, but has a tendency to change in certain circumstances. Among the more memorable instances, Roy Mustang's words become elongated and sharp (and punctuated by little "grr"s) in the scene where he threatens to fry Barry the Chopper for putting a hand on Riza Hawkeye.
• The Occult Club president from Mahoraba alternated within each word between hiragana and katakana ; one scanlation represented this by capitalizing eVeRy OtHeR lEtTeR .
• Mokona in Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE- (original version) speaks in a rounded font. It takes a while to learn to read it...
• Kengamine Nagi in Deadman Wonderland speaks with a synthesizer, which is illustrated through squarish, angled speech bubbles (as opposed to the round ones that the rest of the cast gets.
• Yotsuba in Yotsuba&! speaks entirely in hiragana, which emphasizes her childishness. This effect, alas, has not been reproduced in any English translation.
• Also, the French official translation renders Chachamaru's (and strangely, Kokone's ) bubbles with a different font to reflect a robotic voice.
• Fruits Basket uses odd-shaped panels and unusual fonts throughout to convey emotions.
• At one point in Sekirei , Kazehana greets Minato upon his returning home and her dialogue appears in heart-shaped speech bubbles... at which point Miya scolds her about this , claiming they're against the rules.
• Ai Yori Aoshi and other manga with romance in the plot often have bubbly speech bubbles to represent nervous babbling. Sometimes the bubbles will have their own Sweat Drop .
• Normal human speech is in plain round speech bubbles, with a tail pointing to the onscreen speaker.
• Narration is in plain rectangular speech bubbles. No tails to imply anyone speaking the text.
• A Radio Voice is indicated for broadcasts and speakers by using double-lined rectangular speech bubble, with little spokes along the edges. No tails.
• Shouting is shown by using an angular speech bubble, as if the speaker drew the bubble while upset and was trying to draw a rectangle. Usually has a tail pointing at the speaker.
• Priest uses this a lot; Protagonist Ivan, spirit guide Belial, big bad Temozerala, his demon lieutenants when they transform, and the zombies all have their own fonts.
• Berial in The Tarot Cafe speaks in an elegant Gothic font.
• In what will probably be the only example of characters in prose literature speaking in dialogue balloons, Who Censored Roger Rabbit? by Gary K. Wolf features a world where human beings live side-by-side with cartoon and comics characters. The 'toons communicate via visible dialogue balloons (they even come out of the phone), but can learn to enunciate verbally if they so desire.
• A roundabout example from The Adolescence of P1 , during conversations carried out in text using a dumb terminal connected to a computer, the human side of the conversation is represented by using all lower case text and the titular AI's side is represented by all upper case text.
• All of the dialogue in One Cool Friend is written in line with the rest of the book's text but is wrapped in a speech bubble. Even the blurb on the dust jacket has the lines by Elliot and his father in speech bubbles.
• The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah band used speech bubbles in live performances for comic effect, saying things like "Wow! I'm really expressing myself!"
• Janis Joplin : The album cover of Cheap Thrills uses them, because Robert Crumb did the illustration work.
• Frank Zappa : Zappa also used speech bubbles a lot on his album covers and in the gatefold sleeves, most notably Lumpy Gravy , We're Only in It for the Money , Uncle Meat , Cruising with Ruben & the Jets , Weasels Ripped My Flesh and Läther .
• George Clinton also does this often, both as a solo artist, as well on albums by Parliament and Funkadelic.
• Dungeons & Dragons : In the Planescape setting, the phirblas are a strange race of humanoids who communicate by using a variant of telepathy to form words in the air right above them, about ten at a time, appearing in the language of their intended recipient. The nature of said script indicates the phirblas' emotional state, so flowing and elegant letters are used for a formal address, while quick and simple text indicates a casual conversation, messy writing indicates that the phirblas is in a hurry or doesn't wish to converse, and shaky script suggests emotional distress. This trait suggests some connection between the phirblas and the dabus of Sigil, who famously communicate by projecting Rebus Bubbles above their heads, but nothing conclusive has been proven.
• ANNO: Mutationem : The dialogue between characters has the speech bubble appearing as a floating square-shaped box appearing overhead on whoever is speaking.
• Danganronpa : The climax-reasoning segment of trials depict some characters have a speech bubble with random text to fit the situation.
• In SaGa Frontier , the words in your character's speech bubbles are different colors than everyone else's. If you run into another one of the main characters during a storyline, their words are the same color as your own.
• City of Heroes represents characters' speech in speech bubbles. Players can choose the color of their bubbles and text.
• In Star Control II , each race's speech is subtitled in a different font. These vaguely match their personalities, so the Ur-Quan have large, bold text while the Utwig have thin, wobbly, depressed-looking text.
• Characters talking normally have a regular rounded bubble with normal font size. If a character is extremely shocked or angry, not only the font goes all caps, but the font size grows HUGE and sometimes the speech bubble becomes more pointy instead of round. Characters who are scared or angry may use fonts that wiggle and characters who are very quiet or growing quiet have the font shrink and/or become a light gray instead of the standard black. Truly evil characters have a purple speech bubble.
• In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door at least, Boss characters also have a different sound effect that goes with the scrolling text in their speech bubbles.
• The Mario & Luigi trilogy shares this love for playing with the speech bubbles.
• In Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines , the Malkavian font is like cut out letters from a paper.
• Banjo-Kazooie and Conker's Bad Fur Day have them throughout each cutscene.
• In Final Fantasy IX , every character has them throughout the game, even with the scrolling text in them.
• Persona 5 : Black and red bubbles with "..." in them appear above NPCs who have things to say, and dialogue now appears as square boxes with triangular attachments pointing to the mouths of the Character Portraits that accompany them.
• Touch Detective has the rare feature of the connector tracking the speaker if they are moving.
• Speech bubbles appear above NPCs or smileys when talking. A smaller bubble with "..." appears above NPCs before initiating a dialogue, or above smileys when moving.
• A black speech bubble appears above a sign that's being read, or above a tile whose metadata is being checked.
• Ava's Demon shows off the characters' various colour schemes in their speech bubbles (fill, lettering, and outlines). This is also used to emphasize altered states like curses and being near death.
• In A Moment of Peace , humans have normal speech bubbles and gods speak in floating, colored, Comic Sans MS text.
• By the Tail : Most of the cast have regular speech bubbles. Echo, meanwhile, speaks in black, dripping letters, while Sugar and Spice speak with with rather oriental-looking letters.
• In Exterminatus Now , the Dark Gods have different colored speech bubbles and fonts, and the main character's superior's speech bubble is black with white text. He himself is nearly always in shadow. The writer pointed this out in the comments for the comic.
• Gunnerkrigg Court uses a different color balloon for each character; the differences are usually subtle. When Shadow2 copies another character's voice, this is indicated by his balloon's color. One character's bodily possession is indicated by overlapping balloons. Initially even minor character got their own bubble colors, but this was later dropped; in later chapters, only the major characters get colored speech bubbles. Most minor characters have even lost the bubble colors they once had (e.g. Paz, whose bubbles used to be brown, but now are a generic white).
• Similarly, Irregular Webcomic! uses different colors for different characters, or at least tries to. Many characters and many crossovers have led to a few cases where multiple characters in a strip speak with the same (or very similar) colors.
• Richard from Looking for Group falls under this proposed trope.
• Undead have black speech bubbles with white text. When Xykon becomes a lich in Start of Darkness and his speech bubbles change to the undead format, he comments on his dramatic, echoey voice . Redcloak clarifies that this is because Xykon no longer has a functional larynx, so his voice is magically powered by negative energy.
• Diverse colored speech bubbles for outsiders such as gods, celestials, infernals, and ghosts. Infernals usually have black speech bubbles with colored text inside (lampshaded with Qarr the imp, who is recognized by his red-on-black speech bubbles). Celestials have brightly colored bubbles with black text. Elemental spirits like Celia have a color related to their plane of origin.
• Dragons and half-dragons also have colored speech bubbles linked to their species. Giants too, it seems.
• The shape is sometimes significant too, like with Lawful Neutral Modrons having rectangular bubbles. invoked
• The connectors pointing to which character is speaking also give indications. They are straight when the speaker is healthy, but become irregular for a sick, stunned, drunk, confused, wounded or dying character, to represent shaky speech. Malack's are always this way until he shows his Game Face , hinting of a raspy or hissy voice.
• More classically, bubbles with dotted borders and grey text indicate whispering. Zz'dtri's bubbles always have grey text, since he's The Quiet One and hardly ever raises his voice.
• Early in the comic, mumbling to oneself or aside comments by the characters were texts without bubbles and just a connector. But this became rarer and rarer and has phased out by book 3 — except for the Demon-Roaches, who only ever talk this way .
• Erfworld uses one font (Maiandra GD) for real-world characters (including Parson even after he is summoned into Erfworld), and another (Gorilla Milkshake) for Erfworld's native inhabitants.
• Coga Suro has the usual convention of robots having square speech balloons. Most of them, anyway. Styx, an evil example, has black speech balloons with white text. For a few chapters, each character had a different font, but this was dropped later.
• Comic Book SNAFU uses speech bubbles with different colors or fonts for certain characters, particularly to denote non-human characters like Lancer or Mark Twelve.
• Chainmail Bikini uses a different font for each player (with the same font being used for table talk by the player and in-character statements by that player's character).
• The Wotch uses a black speech-bubble with white letters for Dark Lord Xaos. During a flashback, you see the moment where he discards his old persona as the Lawful Good "Worlock", and dons the spikey darkey helmet of Lawful Evil Lord Xaos; his speech-bubbles reverse their colors from one panel to the next.
• Spider-Man Unlimited (2023) : In the first issue, "Doctor Doom" gets normal speech bubbles until he's revealed as a Doombot robot duplicate. At that point he switches to italics and his speech bubbles acquire jagged tails, emphasising his mechanical nature.
• Bob and George has the Shadowy Author, whose bubbles are normal colored, but just float around without the tail pointing to his mouth. About two years before the end of the comic, his speech balloons suddenly gain a tail; this is our first clue that it's actually George, pretending to be the Shadowy Author .
• DreamCatcher (Hazu) typically uses a standard font for everyone, except early on in the gateworld where they briefly used hard to read cursive text.
• M9 Girls! uses a different font for each major character. For example, the Valley Girl character has a very fancy font, while the villain gets a gothic-looking font. The authors seem to have dropped this in later chapters.
• Agatha and other "Sparks" get a gradual change of font as they draw more and more on the madness that is their source of power... it's not just for decoration, either. With all the cool machines the Sparks can build, it's easy to forget their most insidious power — the ability to draw the easily-impressionable to them, binding their wills, and turning them into "minions". When the font starts getting curly, people start kneeling. Agatha just has a bit of extra punch in that department, thanks to her Mongfish blood.
• When Bangladesh DuPree breaks her jaw and has it wired shut, her speech bubbles become rebuses. Some of Agatha's little clanks "speak" using rebuses as well.
• The Geisterdamen have their own particular fonts, but the same speech bubbles as human characters.
• The Last Days of FOXHOUND does the inverse. When Decoy Octopus is in disguise, his speech bubble remains white, making it easier for readers to identify him. Each character has their own colors of speech bubble, with their own Painting the Medium moments. When Psycho Mantis is using his powers, his text turns from black to red green. It's when he goes totally nuts that his text turns red. And when one character is possessing another, the possessing spirit's speech bubble is used. This is actually used in the last comic, to reveal that Big Boss has taken over Ocelot's mind, not Liquid as the games would have you believe .
• Combo Rangers has speech bubbles Color-Coded for Your Convenience , in accordance to the character's uniform colors. This was useful when it was revealed that a Big Bad was a clone of Power Combo, thanks to their similar speech bubbles.
• The style and fonts used in The Monster & The Girl for each of the major characters. Mayu has blurred edge rounded speech bubbles, Kenrick has extremely ragged edged rectangular speech bubbles.
• Since the characters of 1/0 are actually in a comic strip, they have no audio even to them; their voices are distinguished instead by their fonts. Well, they seem to "hear" their voices, but in the same sense that we do — by seeing the fonts and imagining how they sound. This provokes a bizarre conversation halfway through the strip where they begin arguing about what their voices sound like. Zadok the grass golem is told that only he thinks his voice is a sexy rich baritone instead of a creepy rustling scratching.
• This convention was picked up by Darths & Droids ... and nearly every Campaign Comic in existence.
• And in the recent Deep-Immersion Gaming portions of The Wotch .
• The B-Side Comics from Applegeeks use a similar system: conversations between the artist and writer have the artist speak normally through his avatar and the writer using only square speech balloons while remaining offscreen, almost as a Narrator.
• David Hopkins' Jack uses a very distinctive style of speech bubble with notches along the border for any dialogue spoken by the Sins in the strip and a second distinctive style for those characters who are/were Fallen angels, although the latter is rarely seen. Also, Candy and Ryan Dewalt, the pair behind Vinci and Arty , did a story arc for Jack (with full approval from David Hopkins) and brought their talent for character-specific fonts to Jack .
• One strip from Lick My Jesus (which is regrettably defunct) had one character agreeing with everything another said. It turned out to be because he didn't understand what the person was saying — because he didn't speak Papyrus. The rest of the strip was a series of gags which involved treating fonts as if they were languages.
• In The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob! , Starfish Aliens often speak in hexagon-shaped balloons, while robots usually speak in stylized square balloons reminiscent of the Marvel Comics Transformers .
• College Roomies from Hell!!! 's speech bubbles are mostly in the distinctive "Good Dog" font, but Satan has his own font, and the cyborgised Brazil speaks in a plainer font to suggest his computer-synthesised monotone.
• In Kagerou , different colors are used to differentiate characters, as well as to show which of Kano's personalities is at the fore. His speech bubbles usually match his eyes .
• The Way of the Metagamer started out using Comic Sans for everything. Later on, it switched to Gemelli — but when characters are under mind control or otherwise possessed, their font changes back to Comic Sans. Additionally, the narrator speaks with floating rectangles instead of bubbles — whenever a character imitates the narrator , they too use rectangles.
• Drowtales uses differently colored speech bubbles for different characters. In one panel, Ariel and Chirinide both yell at Kyonne to leave them, and share one bubble with a gradient between their respective colors.
• The comic has mostly normal speech bubbles, but occasionally, an Immortal (or flat-out Eldritch Abominations ) get black speech bubbles that get progressively less normal as they get angry and/or emotional. The Goo doesn't even have a speech bubble, subtly implying that the Goo does not speak using vocals, but instead through telepathy of some sort.
• Also, in one strip, where a new character with long hair is introduced, a little bubble naming him shows up with "gothic" script. He glances over and notices it, physically strikes it with a fist , and it reverts to normal text. It's in the "one-shot" strips, though, where that's more common.
• Yelling is indicated with spiky bubbles.
• Some Abyssals or otherwise death-aspected creatures get white text on a black background.
• Marena has a more animalistic font when in her Deadly Beastman form.
• Nova and the semi-alchemicals have rectangular bubbles, with rounded corners.
• Unnatural Mental Influence is often indicated by the text having a color.
• The Unspeakable's speech bubbles use the Caslon font, as opposed to a "normal" comic font for other characters.
• Also, when Zalgo comes (and goes) in one of the strips, his speech bubbles are oddly-colored and covered in swirly lines.
• Kevin & Kell has started altering its bubbles; once converstations start showing up in 'feline', the bubbles grow cat ears and whiskers.
• Game Destroyers does things a little differently than most other web comics. Unlike other comics, there are no dialogue arrows on the speech bubbles in this comic. Instead, each character has a unique font, text color, and background color. Some characters who know telepathy speak in a rounded edge rectangle instead, whenever the author remembers that, anyway.
• In Level 30 Psychiatry translated Pokémon Speak is rendered in Blue and Yellow balloons reminisant of the Pokemon logo.
• In the xkcd " Time " animation, the Beanie People leader's speech to the protagonists is obfuscated in various ways (words written over each other, gray haze partially blocking the text) to represent the barely-bridged language barrier.
• In Digger , many characters haver unusual speech bubbles, particularly those that live underground. The Cold Servants speak in white-on-black text, and each word is in a different segment of speech bubble. Sweetgrass Voice has white-on-black words in his/its speech. Shadow Child also speaks in white-on-black, but in normal font and speech bubbles. The Statue of Ganesh always has straight edges around His words. The Skin Lizards speak in a different font than most characters.
• General Protection Fault uses a different font for alien speech. Beings from between the dimensions have an extra outline around their speech bubbles - when the webcomic was in color, the ring was red.
• In Funny Farm human characters speak in a handwriting font, while PC, ASCII, Tor the Calculate and other machines have a capitalized sans serif font.
• In one panel where Nintendo is drawn in CD-i Zelda style , she speaks in Comic Sans as opposed to the regular font.
• When a character is speaking from offscreen, their head will show up right next to/partially inside their speech bubble.
• Different fonts are used in Leif & Thorn to represent people speaking different languages. The speech bubbles of vampires are outlined in red.
• In Rusty and Co. , Malevolus speaks in black-letter font on scroll-shaped bubbles. His speech bubbles turn normal once, precisely because he's making an effort to disguise his voice.
• Splashmaster has white text on navy blue bubbles, with wavy tails. They also have water dripping off them, and his text is rendered in ALL CAPS to denote his Simpleton Voice .
• Noisemaster 's bubbles are neon with the colors changing every page. Each bubble has a "shadow" the same color as the text. When not playing up his raver persona, the bubbles use darker colors.
• His partner, Mutemaster , speaks in white-on-gray cloud-shaped bubbles. Mutemaster's magic power also removes the text from other characters' speech bubbles.
• Rosemaster speaks in white-on-green bubbles with vine-like appendages. The first letter of every bubble is also written in a fancier style, denoting her elegance. When angry, the bubbles become red and the vines have thorns. When she's empowered by a magical artifact, her bubbles are white-on-black with a pink outline, and the fancy lettering becomes fancier.
• Quakemaster speaks in blocky pitch-black charcoal bubbles with orange text. His text is also in ALL CAPS, though like Rosemaster, the first letter of every bubble is larger than the rest.
• Glitchmaster speaks entirely in EarthBound -styled text boxes, with each statement preceded by a bullet. When angered, her boxes become glitchy and misshapen and use a pixellated all-caps font.
• The final, unnamed Master speaks in dark blue bubbles with a fuzzy outline and its text uses a different typeface for every letter that aren't aligned with each other, giving off a very erratic feel.
• Fillbert : Most speech bubbles are black text on a white background. Fabian's speech bubbles are white text on a black background; he chose this because the default was too bright for him. Black text on yellow rectangles are a character .
• In Sleepless Domain Magical Girls have their speech bubble outline and fonts colored their main color, while civilians have the traditional black. Meanwhile, The Purple One has the inverse, the balloon itself is purple while the outline and the font are white. This mostly holds over when she fuses with Tessa, with the exception of when she poses as Tessa, in which it's the same as the normal magical girls to blend in.
• Pixie Trix Comix : When Zadie is introduced to Marie and is jealous over her closeness with Dante and Gwynn, there are icicles hanging from her speech bubble when she says, "Charmed."
• No End : The Dreaded Red Twin Ratan's speech bubbles have elaborate, loopy tails and meandering text to represent the weird cadence of his words — unless he's feeling serious enough to speak levelly. When he's speaking for his sister Tora, the bubbles are ordinary but the text is red.
• The Owl House : In the episode "Lost in Language", when Luz opens a graphic novel during the Wailing Star's influences, speech bubbles appear above Luz, Edric, and Emira's heads when they talk.
• Many cartoons of the silent era , such as Felix the Cat , would use Speech Bubbles as opposed to the word cards usually seen in live-action silent films. Lampshaded by Walt Disney in his first color television show, when he goes over how cartoons acted prior to the dawn of sound. Walt: And as for sound... Well, if a character had something to say, he said it like this. [ he notices a bubble with what he just said written in it, which he pops with a baton ]
• The Belgian cartoon short series Kabouter Wesley does show speech bubbles when the characters are talking. While this is mostly due to the cartoons being virtually unaltered adaptations of the comics they are based on, some of the series's absurd jokes involve characters directly referring to spelling mistakes in another character's speech balloon, so it is quite essential for the text to show up to make these jokes work.
• Thought bubbles are often used on The Simpsons to show what a character is thinking.
• In the Muppet Babies (1984) episode where the babies make their own newspaper, Fozzie makes a comic strip and points out the speech bubbles when they appear (starting with one that says "Booooo!" after his first joke). The bubbles eventually start hurting him when he runs into the pointers, and eventually crowd him out.
• In the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Sleepy Time", dreams are shown as thought bubbles, which SpongeBob's dream self is able to jump into and invade other's dreams .

Video Example(s):

Nothing happened....

When Luz opens a graphic novel during the Wailing Star's influences, speech bubbles appear above Luz, Edric, and Emira's heads when they talk.

Alternative Title(s): Speech Bubble , Speech Balloon , Thought Bubble , Speech Balloons

• Rebus Bubble
• Born in the Funny Papers
• Sunday Strip
• Roger Rabbit Effect
• MediaNotes/The Silent Age of Animation
• The Speechless
• Self-Referential Track Placement
• Painting the Medium
• Speech-Bubbles Interruption
• Rings of Activation
• Shapes and Symbols Tropes
• Sphere Eyes
• Sorkin Relationship Moment
• Webcomic Tropes
• Talking Is a Free Action
• Speaking in Panels
• Comic Book Tropes
• Speech-Bubble Censoring
• The Sandman
• ImageSource/DC Comics
• To Hell with This Infernal Job
• Text Tropes
• Speculative Fiction LGBT
• WeAreNotAlone/Tropes Q to Z
• Speech Impediment
• Human Chess
• QuoteSource/Comic Books

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Speech Bubble

What is a speech bubble.

A speech bubble is a shape, like a cloud, balloon or bubble, which contains text representing a character's speech. It can also be called a speech balloon, a word balloon or a dialogue balloon.

What do you write inside a speech bubble?

Inside the bubble, the words that the character says are written.

'He said', 'she said', or 'they said' are not needed, as the tail points to who is speaking.

The text should include punctuation, but inverted commas are not necessary, as the bubble itself shows that the words are speech.

Speech bubble activity ideas

1. Character conversations

Choose two characters from a book you are reading, and encourage children to create a conversation between them, using speech bubbles to record what they say to each other. This could be used to further explore an event that has already happened in the story, or, you could suggest a situation that the characters might face in the future. This activity could be done in pairs, where each child takes on the role of a different character. For older children, it might be more challenging to take on the role of both characters (and perspectives) themselves.

2. Talk to a character!

Give children the opportunity to 'interact' with a character at a specific point in the text. Enourage them to ask questions or offer advice - what would they do in the character's situation, and why? You could give children speech bubbles on post-it notes, which can then be stuck in the appropriate place on the page.

3. Give words to a non-speaking character/animal

Sometimes, there are characters in a story who do not speak. Ask children to infer what they might say if they did speak. Again, children could use speech bubbles on post-it notes, and stick them on the page next to the non-speaking character.

For all of the above suggested activities, you might find this FREE Speech Bubble Template pack useful.

4. Use within cartoon strips

This can be a fun way to get your children to summarise or retell part, or all, of a story. This FREE Cartoon Strips Template is a perfect resource for this activity.

Speech bubbles can also be an effective way of developing children's social communication skills . They could be used to explore how children would, and should, respond in a variety of different social situations, e.g. if a person said this to you, what would you say back?

Our FREE Text Message Template could be used for this type of activity with KS2 children.

Other types of bubble...

Whisper bubble

Used to indicate that a character is talking quietly

Thought bubble

Used to convey what a character is thinking instead of saying

Scream bubble

Used to indicate that a character is shouting or screaming

FREE Speech Bubble Template

FREE Cartoon Strips Template

FREE Text Message Template

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Glossary : Speech Bubble

• 1.1 Deadpool
• 1.2 Gwenpool
• 1.3 Evil Deadpool
• 1.4 Iron Man
• 1.6 Asgardians
• 1.8 Cosmic beings

Speech Bubble

A speech bubble, also known as a speech balloon, is a graphic convention used in comics used to represent what a given character is saying. A speech bubble is comprised of two parts: the bubble itself and its tail. The bubble is where the text is placed. Conventionally, it's a white oval of varying proportions with a black outline. The tail extends from the bubble (usually the bottom), and points towards the character the speech or thoughts belong to.

A variant of a speech balloon is a thought bubble, used to represent a character's thoughts. Its bubble is similar in shape to a cloud, and its tail is replaced by a line of circles in descending size. Thought bubbles, however, have fallen in disuse by the 2000s, being replaced by caption boxes.

If a character is speaking another language it will be bracketed. Depending on the intonation, the speech bubble may have different shapes; when a character screams, conventionally, the bubble around the words is drawn in a starburst shape, while the words are highlighted in bold italics, or written with a different, more garish font with the words spilling out of the bubble's confines for exceptionally loud yells or beastly roars.

While most characters speech bubbles have a white background, Deadpool 's are yellow. This is down to represent his distinctive voice (although nobody knows exactly what is distinctive about his voice, only that it sounds different). Cable of Earth-5701 has described his voice as having a "gravelly, Demi Moore" quality before "killing" him. [1] Blind Al has also stated that Deadpool's voice sounds like a distinct mixture of "gasoline and gravel." In his earliest appearances, his speech balloons were normal balloons with red borders (soon changed to yellow borders); in later appearances, the interior would be colored yellow and the text would be written in a slightly mangled font. Due to Deadpool's ability to break the Fourth wall he can see the speech bubbles.

Gwenpool 's speech bubbles are pink to denote the "sort of a cosmic accent" all people from her native universe possess, which was observed by Doctor Strange . [2]

Evil Deadpool

As an "anti-Deadpool", Evil Deadpool's speech bubbles are black with yellow text.

When Tony Stark is donning the armor (at least the helmet), his voice issues out through the helmet's built-in speakers, giving him speech bubbles with an electronic quality. At first, this was represented by geometrically correct bubbles with a lightning-shaped tail and the text in italics. Recently, though, the shape has been varying. Currently, Iron Man's speech bubbles are golden with red outlines, drawn as rectangles with rounded corners, and with the text written in italics. Other Stark-armored characters, such as War Machine, Rescue or Doctor Doom as Iron Man, have similar speech bubbles, color-coded to the respective character (Doom's speech bubbles, notably, have an octogonal shape).

Similarly to Iron Man, speech bubbles belonging to robots, androids and synthezoids have a more technological quality to them. There are exceptions, such as Life Model Decoys (who are structured to be functionally identical to organic humans) and sometimes, Doombots, for the same reason (usually, when it is known from the outset that a Doombot is being used for a story, their speech may be rendered in italics to reinforce their nature). Vision's speech bubbles, in particular, are usually yellow with black outlines and font.

Asgardian speech is not much different from normal speech, however, as of the 2000s, their text uses a different font, reminiscent of old tomes.

Thanos' speech bubbles are only different from the average ones in their rugged look and thick black outlines, supposedly representing a booming, deep voice. Sometimes the speech's font is also rugged to follow the bubble's shape.

Cosmic beings

Many cosmic beings have different forms of speech bubbles, some of them not even having a tail, to indicate that their voice is being projected through unnatural means; the Living Tribunal, for example, used to have his speech not constrained in bubbles at all, instead simply rendered in block letters next to him.

• ↑ Cable & Deadpool #16
• ↑ Unbelievable Gwenpool #3

[ top ] [ Edit Speech Bubble ]

• 1 Victor von Doom (Earth-616)
• 2 Cassandra Nova Xavier (Earth-616)
• 3 Wade Wilson (Earth-616)

Exploring Speech Bubbles Templates

Explore a variety of speech bubble templates to add flair to your designs.

Speech bubbles are an integral part of visual communication, often used in graphic novels, comics, and web design to represent dialogue or thoughts. They add a dynamic element to the narrative, making it more engaging and interactive. The use of speech bubbles isn’t limited to these areas; they are also used in presentations, educational materials, and marketing collateral. This guide will delve into the world of speech bubbles templates, their uses, and how to create them.

Understanding Speech Bubbles

Speech bubbles, also known as speech balloons, are graphical elements that visually represent communication in comics and graphic novels. They have been used since the early 20th century and have become a staple in the comic book industry. The shape, size, and style of a speech bubble can convey different emotions and tones, making them a versatile tool in visual storytelling.

Speech bubbles are not just for comics. They are also used in other forms of media such as web design, advertising, and educational materials. They can make content more engaging and easier to understand , especially when explaining complex concepts or instructions.

Different Types of Speech Bubbles

There are several types of speech bubbles, each with its unique purpose and design. The most common types include the dialogue bubble, thought bubble, scream bubble, whisper bubble, and caption. The dialogue bubble, which is the most common type, is used to represent spoken words. On the other hand, the thought bubble, often cloud-shaped , is used to represent thoughts or internal monologue .

The scream bubble, with jagged edges, represents shouting or loud speech, while the whisper bubble, usually depicted with a dotted line, represents soft or whispered speech. Lastly, the caption is used to provide narration, setting details, or other non-dialogue information.

Creating Speech Bubbles Templates

Creating speech bubbles templates can be a fun and creative process. It allows you to add a personal touch to your comics, presentations, or marketing materials. There are several ways to create speech bubbles templates, from using graphic design software like Adobe Illustrator to online tools and even coding them in HTML and CSS.

When creating speech bubbles templates, it’s important to consider the content that will go inside the bubble. The shape, size, and style of the bubble should complement the tone and message of the text. For instance, if the text is a loud exclamation, a large bubble with jagged edges would be appropriate.

Using Graphic Design Software

Graphic design software like Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign offer tools and features that make it easy to create speech bubbles. These software programs allow you to draw custom shapes, add text, and apply styles to create unique speech bubbles. They also offer templates that you can use as a starting point.

Creating speech bubbles in graphic design software involves drawing the bubble shape, adding the tail, and inserting the text. You can customize the shape and style of the bubble to match the tone of the text. Once you’re happy with the design, you can save it as a template for future use.

Using Online Tools

There are several online tools that allow you to create speech bubbles quickly and easily. These tools offer pre-designed templates that you can customize with your text and style. Some of these tools include Canva, Piktochart, and Bubblr.

These online tools are user-friendly and don’t require any design skills. You simply choose a template, add your text, and customize the design to suit your needs. Once you’re done, you can download the speech bubble as an image file for use in your projects.

Coding Speech Bubbles in HTML and CSS

If you have some knowledge of HTML and CSS, you can code your own speech bubbles. This gives you complete control over the design and functionality of the bubbles. You can create any shape, size, and style of bubble, and even add interactive elements like hover effects.

Coding speech bubbles involves creating a container for the bubble, adding the text, and styling the bubble and text with CSS. The bubble’s tail is created using the CSS pseudo-elements ::before and ::after. You can then save the code as a template for future use.

Speech bubbles templates are a versatile tool in visual communication. They can be used in a variety of media, from comics and graphic novels to web design and advertising. Creating your own speech bubbles templates can be a fun and creative process, whether you’re using graphic design software, online tools, or coding them in HTML and CSS.

Remember, the key to effective speech bubbles is to match the design with the tone and content of the text. With a bit of creativity and practice, you can create engaging and dynamic speech bubbles that enhance your visual storytelling.

Start Creating Your Own Speech Bubbles Today!

Ready to bring your visual stories to life? With Phraseit, you can easily create professional-looking speech bubbles for your comic strips or other visuals. Whether you’re uploading your own images or choosing from our curated stock photos, our free online speech bubble maker at phraseit.net offers a variety of custom bubbles to personalize and add flair to your projects. Don’t wait any longer—check out our bubble maker and start crafting your unique dialogue-filled scenes now!

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What are Speech Bubbles?

Speech bubbles are a visual means of conveying words spoken by characters in comic books and comic strips. They have been used in conjunction with drawn characters since comics first began appearing as early satirical drawings in the 19th century. These bubbles are clearly identifiable as intentionally drawn shapes containing text located next to an illustrated character.

Not to be confused with captions, which are generally reserved for narration rather than dialogue and take the form of squares of text attached above or below the panel, speech bubbles are contained within the panel and used to convey the dialogue of cartoon characters. They indicate spoken words, while thought bubbles indicate a character’s thoughts and are differentiated by their shape. Thought bubbles are generally cloud-shaped or circular with an increasingly smaller chain of circles directed at the character in thought, while speech is typically distinguished by pointed tails directed to the speaking character.

There are different types and shapes of speech bubbles used to help convey the tone of the dialogue to the reader. For example, angry speech or shouting may be indicated by text inside jagged-edged bubbles. Normal conversation is usually indicated by text inside simple circular or square-shaped balloons. The difference in shapes may vary with the artist and the cultural influence of the comic. For example, Manga artists may utilize them differently than American artists.

The location of speech bubbles is important to keep the illustrated dialogue flowing. The tail generally helps identify who has spoken the words they contain. It usually points to speaking character, but if a character is off-panel and cannot be seen, the tail may be pointed off panel or may be pointed inward toward the bubble itself. Broadcast speech bubbles indicating radio or television dialogue generally have jagged, lightening-bolt tails.

Speech bubbles are essential for expressing spoken dialogue and anything meant to be audible in comics. Comic strip artists must carefully choose and place them in order to communicate the proper meaning and not to confuse the reader. From basic balloons to those expressing emotion, thought, or even action, such as the "Z" speech bubble indicating sleep, their proper use helps bring comic strips and graphic novels to life for their readers.

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Give your image a voice with a speech bubble

Draw your audience’s eyes to your message by wrapping it in a speech bubble. We have hundreds to choose from and you can even design your own.

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Speech bubble, thought bubble, text bubble —whatever you call ‘em—add ‘em with Snappa

Choose from hundreds of speech bubbles

Click Graphics → Icons or Vectors → then search “speech bubble” or “thought bubble” to reveal hundreds of choices.

You’ll find speech bubbles that are round and rectangular, some that are shaped like clouds and other oddly shaped text bubbles, and some that are filled in with a color and others that aren’t. Whatever look you’re after, there’s a speech bubble to match.

Add your own finishing touches

Once you find the right shape for your speech bubble, it’s time to make it your own.

Change the size of your text bubble and its fill color by choosing from our palette of popular colors or by playing with the color picker, and increase or decrease opacity until it's exactly what you envisioned.

Flip and rotate speech bubbles

Isn’t it annoying when you have the perfect image and the perfect speech bubble, but the mouth of the image’s subject and the speech bubble don’t line up?

With Snappa, you can flip any speech bubble in one click then rotate it until it lines up.

Add text to speech bubbles

A speech bubble without text is... a bubble?

Add text to your bubble in one click, choose from 200+ fonts or upload your own, and play with font styles, color, shadows, blur, letter spacing and line height until you achieve the look you’re after.

Design your own speech bubbles

If hundreds of speech bubbles and countless ways to customize them still leaves you wanting more — it’s time to get creative.

There is nothing stopping you from uploading speech bubbles to Snappa, or using shapes and vector images to create a speech bubble unlike anything anyone has ever seen before. It’s all drag ’n’ drop and point ’n’ click.

Bring attention to offers

Just try to ignore the text inside of a speech bubble. You can’t. So what better place to hint at an offer or sale?

Show what someone’s thinking

Drop a thought bubble on to your image and add text that says what you want your customers to think about.

Create a comic strip

Drag ’n’ drop images of two or more people on to your background, add speech bubbles and text, and you’ve captured a full-blown convo.

Snappa is the best tool I've used to create images for blog posts & Facebook ads. In 5 minutes I can do what used to take me hours to do or pay designers to do.

Sujan Patel,

Co-founder of webprofits, speech bubble faq, do you have quotation marks i can use in place of a speech bubble.

We have hundreds of quotation marks you can use to bring attention to your text. There are filled in quotes and hollow quotes, rounded quotes and angular quotes, double and single quotes. You can change the color, size, opacity, and orientation of any quote, too.

Can I use Snappa for free?

On the forever free plan, you can add speech bubbles, use the complete photo editor, and download three images per month. The Pro ($10/month) or Team ($20/month) plans include UNLIMITED image downloads and social sharing.

Do you have stock photos, graphics, and templates that I can use?

Do we ever! You get access to 5,000,000+ high-res free use photos and graphics and 6,000+ professionally designed customizable templates. Of course, you can add and edit anything in our library to make it fit your vision.

Add speech bubbles to your photo in seconds

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Kapow! Zap! Splat! How comics make sound on the page

Teaching Associate / Filmmaker, Monash University

Disclosure statement

Victor Araneda Jure does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Monash University provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation AU.

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Typically, comics are considered a silent medium. But while they don’t come with an aural soundtrack, comics have a unique grammar for sound.

From Wolverine’s SNIKT! when unsheathing his claws, to Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 in The Death of Stalin (later made into a film) the use of “textual audio” invites comics readers to hear with their eyes .

Fundamental elements such as symbols, font styles and onomatopoeia (where words imitate sounds) mean reading comics is a cross-sensory experience. New and old examples show the endless potential of the artform.

Holy onomatopoeia Batman!

Onomatopoeia — isn’t unique to comics but comic artists have certainly perfected this figurative form of language . POW! BAM! BANG! appear on the page when Batman and Robin land a punch. BLAM! is the sound made by the Penguin’s umbrella when it shoots from a distance.

The list of sounds represented by onomatopoeia is limitless in terms of creative potential. There are words that mimic sounds directly, such as SPLOSH! (the sound made by an object falling into water) and made-up sounds like that of Wolverine’s adamantium claws (as we will see further below).

The language of comics offers creative freedom to expand the aural lexicon. One online database lists over 2500 comic book sounds with links to comics images in which they’ve been used.

This can also present special challenges for translators . Sounds represented in comics can range from speech sounds (subject to language rules including those governing how syllables can be formed) to human-made non-verbal sounds like sneezes, to sounds made by objects and environments.

Visual context is important too. We only recognise the warning of Wolverine’s violent retribution in SNIKT! when the word is drawn and displayed next to the hairy mutant.

Likewise, the word THWIP! by itself may not mean much. But when positioned in context it can imbue a comic page with excitement and adventure.

Imagine a young man dressed in a tight red-and-blue bodysuit diving at high speed from the top of the Empire State building. Suddenly, just before hitting the ground, THWIP! he shoots spider webs from his wrists, using them to swing from building to building. Both readers and the crowd of enthusiastic fans on the page react: “Here comes Spidey!”

The way they say it

Comic creators also use font style and size and different speech bubble shapes and effects to shout, whisper or scream language.

Bold, italics, punctuation, faded or irregular letters are used to emphasise different features of the written words: fear, courage, loudness or quietness.

In My Friend Dahmer , created by a school friend of the infamous serial killer, the protagonist is seen carrying a dead cat on his way home by a group of kids. Comics creator John “Derf” Backderf applies bigger-bold words in one of the kids’ speech balloon to emphasise the shouting and surprise of onlookers.

Read more: Heroes, villains ... biology: 3 reasons comic books are great science teachers

Music to my eyes

The 1973 manga Barefoot Gen , written by Keiji Nakazawa, explores his firsthand experience of the bombing of Hiroshima and its aftermath.

Gen, the main character, sings through several pages of the story. The author uses a musical note symbol ( ♪ ) to indicate where speech bubbles are sung. By the final pages of the fourth volume, Gen sings to celebrate that his hair is beginning to grow again after being affected by radiation poisoning.

When preceded by the easily recognisable musical symbol, it’s virtually impossible to read the dialogue without “hearing” a melody:

♪ “Red roof on a green hilltop … A bell tower shaped like a pixie hat… The bell rings, ding-dong-ding … The baby goats sing along, baa-baa-baa …” ♪

Expanding on this concept, How to Talk to Girls at Parties by Neil Gaiman contains musical panels where the combination of drawings, words and signs present a soundtrack.

In film terminology, this is diegetic sound — noises or tunes from within the storyworld — as opposed to a narrative voiceover or a musical soundtrack the characters can’t hear within the story.

In Gaiman’s comic a combination of illustrations, musical notes and words (including the onomatopoeic TUM for a base drum beat) convey the sense that music fills every room of the house where a party is taking place.

In the political satire comic that inspired a movie , The Death of Stalin creator Fabien Nury and illustrator Thierry Robin show lines from Mozart’s orchestral score for his Piano Concerto No. 23 at the bottom of two pages. This adds drama to a climactic scene where Russian leader suffers a stroke.

Next time you read a comic book, make sure you listen carefully. KABOOM!

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Synonyms for Speech bubble

29 other terms for speech bubble - words and phrases with similar meaning.

Alternatively

Write some text and click Create to make your own pixel speech bubble.

Inspired by the style of Diesel Sweeties by R. Stevens. Questions or comments? twitter @pxlspeechbubble / email [email protected]

Turn your images into speech bubble memes with ease!

Drag 'n' drop your image here, or click to select one

Frequenty asked questions

What is Speechmeme?

Speechmeme is a tool that allows you to easily turn images into trendy and popular speech bubble memes, often seen in chat messages on social platforms like discord.

What type of images do you support?

You can currently use any image format such as JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP, SVG, WEBP, TIFF, AI, PSD, EPS, PDF, SVG, and more.

Why did you make this?

I made this tool because I often found content on Discord and other social media platforms that needed to be turned into a speech bubble meme. However, when I tried to find a reliable speech bubble meme generator on Google, I couldn't find any suitable websites. Let's be honest, nobody wants to search for a template and then go through the trouble of editing it to fit their needs. That's why I created this tool.

Why is the output image always of type '.gif'?

Discord only permits you to star/favorite gifs. Since many people enjoy favoriting speech bubble memes, I concluded it was the optimal choice to make.

Can I delete my images?

Images uploaded to our public gallery can be easily deleted by clicking on the little trash can icon in the top right corner of your post.

Is this free?

This speech bubble meme maker will forever stay free. I hope you enjoy using it!

Speech Bubble Business Names

Generate unique speech bubble names instantly with design.com's ai speech bubble name generator, see what talk bubble looks like on a logo.

Don’t need a Speech Bubble name? Try these business names

• Search Search Icon chat names
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• Search Search Icon conversation names
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• Search Search Icon speak names
• Search Search Icon dialogue names
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• Search Search Icon comic names
• Search Search Icon thought names
• Search Search Icon text names
• Search Search Icon quote names
• Search Search Icon pop names
• Search Search Icon word names
• Search Search Icon bubble names
• Search Search Icon expression names

How it works

It takes seconds to generate a great speech bubble name - here's how:.

With Design.com’s AI powered speech bubble name generator you can create the perfect speech bubble name instantly. Design.com's AI powered name generator will ensure your speech bubble name is catchy, creative and unique.

Generate speech bubble names

Generate names instantly by first entering a description of your business. With the power of AI and advanced algorithms you'll have a speech bubble name in a matter of seconds - you just have to choose the one you like.

Regenerate speech bubble names

If you can't see a speech bubble name you like, no problem. Simply regenerate more speech bubble names with keywords or by adjusting the business name style and length controls.

Let's use your new speech bubble name

You can see how your speech bubble name looks on a high quality, professionally designed logo - instantly! Get your branding right by finding the perfect speech bubble logo.

Speech Bubble Generator

Instantly add speech bubble to photo online for free. Experiment with various speech bubble styles and fonts to transform your photos. Try our free speech bubble generator now!

Add Speech Bubble to Photo in Seconds

With our speech bubble generator, you can effortlessly add a speech bubble to a picture in just a few clicks! Just upload your photo, choose a speech bubble you like, and add your caption text. It’s that easy- no design skills needed at all. After creating your perfect speech bubble photo, download it in high-quality PNG, JPG, and PDF formats for free! Whether you’re looking to add text bubbles to create memes or add funny dialogs or conversations to spice up your photos, we’ve got you covered. Try it out to make your photos “talk”!

Customize Your Text Bubbles With Ease

You are free to edit the text bubbles however you want. Drag and rotate bubbles to place them in the perfect spot. Personalize the text with different fonts, sizes, and colors. It’s never been easier to make speech bubbles. Plus, you can further customize speech bubbles by adding borders, shadows, and outlines. Our speech bubble generator will give your photos a new life!

A Variety of Free Speech Balloons to Choose From

Explore over 1,000+ speech bubble styles for every need and occasion. From classic oval text bubbles to comic style bubbles, our speech bubble generator has it all. Easily find a conversation bubble that best fits your creative vision!

Oval Speech Bubble

This is the standard type of speech bubble with a rounded and smooth shape.

Rectangular Speech Bubble

A rectangular shape with rounded corners. It is ideal for long text, often seen in comics and manga.

Vertical Speech Bubble

Vertical speech bubbles can be a great solution for photos with limited space.

Dotted Comic Speech Bubble

A speech bubble with a dotted or dashed outline, often indicates whispering or quiet talk.

Blast Comic Bubble

Multi-edged bubbles are a type of comic bubbles. They are usually used to express shouting or screaming.

Extended Text Bubble

If the text or dialogue is too long or there is a pause, you can choose this kind of extended text bubble.

Wavy Speech Bubble

To show weak or fading speech, wavy speech bubbles are the right ones.

Thought Bubble

Add thought bubble to photo to express a character’s inner thoughts or monologues.

Pixel Speech Bubble

A retro-inspired talking bubble, perfect for giving your images a vintage, pixelated touch.

Add Talk Bubbles on the Go with Our Mobile App

Looking for a way to add speech bubble to photo on iPhone? Look no further! Our mobile app is available for both iPhone and Android devices too. With just a few taps, you can effortlessly add talking bubbles to any picture. Download our app today and start adding some playful dialogue to your photos!

How to Add Speech Bubble to Photo?

• Adding speech bubbles to photos is a breeze using Fotor’s free online speech bubble generator. Click the button "Add Speech Bubble Now" to get started.
• Upload your image and select a speech bubble you like from the left toolbar.
• Drag and drop the speech bubble to the desired position. Add text and customize the size, color, and fonts of the speech bubble to match your photo perfectly.
• That's it. Save your edited photo in your preferred file format.

Get Creatives with Speech Bubbles

Add funny captions, share inspirational quotes, or even create comic strips . Discover the endless possibilities with our speech bubble generator!

Speech Bubble Memes

Write hilarious captions to turn your photos into speech bubble memes.

Comic Strips

Choose from a huge collection of comic bubbles to make your own comic books!

Social Media Posts

Put speech bubbles on photos to create share-worthy social media posts to tell a story, or share a funny quote.

Why Choose Our Speech Bubble Maker

Easy to Use

Upload your photo, add speech bubble and your text, and share. No technical skills needed at all.

Rich Speech Bubble Styles

Access an extensive selection of high-quality speech bubbles. Perfet for every style and theme.

Customization Options

Easily tailor every aspect of your speech bubbles to your liking.

FAQs about Speech Bubble

What is a speech bubble, how do you edit a speech bubble, what is the app for adding text bubbles to photos, the best free online speech bubble generator - try now.

Add speech bubble to photo in various styles and create fun and engaging images in seconds. Try our speech bubble generator now!

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How do you put a reader-chosen name on a speech bubble?

Can anyone help?

Would be much appreciated, guys! XxShanLxX - New writer <3

Under creating characters when it says

Script Name: YOU (or whatever you put)

Display Name: NAME (change it to NAME)

By writing name, and having the script in the story where the reader can choose their name, it should work.

Thanks, but can you give me an example? That would be great.

Then in my script,

#Avatar - Name Input { NARRATOR So… what’s your name?

label first_name_input

input What’s Your First Name?|What’s Your First Name?|Done(FIRSTNAME)

if (FIRSTNAME is “”) {

goto first_name_input

} else { continue }

@ARIA is listen_phone_sigh

If you type NARRATOR (YOU) as well as changing your characters’ display name, the custom name will show up.

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Carl Radke Explains the Meaning Behind the Name of His New Non-Alcoholic Hot Spot, Soft Bar

The  Summer House  entrepreneur shared the interesting inspiration behind the name of his new business venture. 

Carl Radke  just announced the name and location of his new  non-alcoholic bar, Soft Bar + Cafe . Following his big reveal, the  Summer House   cast member clarified the meaning behind the bar's name.

How to Watch

Watch  Summer House  on Bravo Thursdays at 9/8c and next day on  Peacock . Catch up on the  Bravo app .

While speaking to  Page Six , Carl revealed that his European travels inspired the name, since several overseas bars called non-alcoholic beverages "soft cocktails" or "soft." 

“While ‘Soft drinks’ is a term used in the US, it has a different connotation, typically representing soda,” he told the outlet. “I wanted to define a new — and much needed — category and space, having ‘soft drinks’ or ‘softs’ be seen as functional and high quality non [alcoholic] beverages for adults.”

He continued, ”I was sharing this thought during a conversation with my co-founder as we discussed raising the bar in the non-[alcoholic] space, ultimately leading us to the name ‘Soft Bar.’”

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More Details About Carl Radke's Non-Alcoholic Bar, Soft 

Carl announced his new brick-and-mortar bar venture on July 30. "It's officially happening!" he declared over Instagram Story photos from  Soft Bar + Cafe's official Instagram account . 

Carl Radke Just Revealed *Major* News About His Non-Alcoholic Bar: "Officially Happening!"

The bar's bio notes the business is "popping up around NY summer 2024" and will be "Brooklyn's first non-[alcoholic] bar + cafe for mindful consumption (coming soon)."

Though Carl hasn't yet revealed all the details about the bar, a July 30  post  states, "From daily operations to ambiance to individual drinks, we do it all with much thought and the best intentions."

Carl first opened up about wanting to create a zero-proof bar on  Season 8, Episode 3  of  Summer House , "I'm proud to be a voice for things that I've been through and hopefully help other people," he shared on the show. "So I've been thinking about a sports bar, non-alcoholic. A sober sports bar."

Following his declaration, he revealed  on the  Summer House  reunion that he was pursuing the project.

"I want to lean into non-alcoholic stuff, whether it's opening a cafe or sports bar, which, by the way, I'm about to," he shared. "I've got a team together, we've raised some money, and we're actually going to open something here in New York."

The entrepreneur added: "It feels like my calling. It's finally looking at me, and I want to go pursue that." 

Is Carl Radke still working for Kyle Cooke's company, Loverboy? 

Though Carl seems excited to focus on his latest venture, he confirmed earlier in 2024 that he still works for  Kyle Cooke 's beverage company, Loverboy,  part-time  after leaving in  February 2023 . (Carl announced at BravoCon in November 2023 that he was  returning  to  focus on the brand's non-alcoholic products ). 

"It speaks to me personally, it speaks to my passion to help people who don’t drink feel more comfortable," Carl told  The Daily Dish  in February. "The fact that we're now offering a non-alcoholic version of Loverboy is just incredible." ​​​​​​

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