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Alien message: arrows and sequence order

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This is part of my Alien Message series:

I recall a TV show featuring a discussion on the design of warning messages for deep time, the little cartoon had dots in each panel (●, ●●, ●●●) because if the read right-to-left they might think it depicts a place where skeletons can be brought back to life! However, this is not a satisfying answer to me, as the people might naturally count down a series of steps to a conclusion.

In Dragon's Egg, the characters remark on the Earthling's drawings, why are there chevrons on the pointer? It must be their way of drawing an arrow, they decided.

So, how can something like a flow diagram depict arrows indicating direction? The style of an arrow head and tail might be completely culture specific. My first thought was to label it with dots (●, ●●, ●●●) along the line, but that reminded me of the first problem I related.

How could you clearly depict directional arrows in an alien drawing?

Related: how to depict sequence in general, among a set of pages, diagrams, or figures? Even the "correct" orientation of the page is not known! (An answer to one can be used to solve the other.)

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This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/71048. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

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Introduce your sequence symbols temporally. Instead of broadcasting a single image of a "comic strip", broadcast a sequence of separate images that show the progression of the sequence markers. First image shows a single ●, pause, second image shows two ●●, pause, third image shows ●●●, etc.

Then you can use that as an established sequence to build more abstract symbols on.

Eg.

→ ●  ●●  ●●● →

← ●●●  ●●  ● ←
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