Thanks for all of the responses. As a non-techie Luddite, I admit the unanimity surprises me. I see so many changes in tech which strike me as unnecessary and adding no value, that it surprises me that hard/software makers aren’t looking to change this. If for no reason other than to appear “modern”. (We recently had a reworking of our case management system at work. They asked a survey, which actually included a survey asking something like: “Do you find it useful that the new system uses different terms to describe the exact same thing the old system did?”)
A couple of stupid examples - ISTR that some email cursors on either PC or Apple changed in the last couple of years - from the English work “SEND”, to some combination of arrows/paper airplanes. And I remember decades back when MS thought it a good idea to change the start button that said “START”, to some design I just thought was ornamentation.
On one hand, I can understand not wanting to rely on English as the worldwide standard. But, by the logic in the answers above - if users readily learn that “START” and “SEND” mean start and send - why change them? And if we are interested in universality, why have a HOME icon that resembles nothing many folk in many parts of the world live in?
And then there is the issue of why we even have to call computer things by paper/real life examples. Such as “files” or “folders”? Might be better as a longterm solution to give those functions/actions nonsense names and associate them with nonsense icons.
Just surprises me that in this respect, the industry would be happy with anachronism.
I’ve seen a whole grab bag of meanings for all of these. I have seen to mean “initiate a connection”, and to mean “connect and transmit” and all sorts of different meanings.
In one of her Sci-Fi books, Melissa Scott has imagined exactly that. People call old-fashioned alphabetic writing “realprint” and it is a dying skill. Meantime, everyone can read the new iconographic writing, One problem is that it is hard to write, Would you rather write out “save” or draw a floppy?
I’ve read some discussions, such as this, but not much authoritative. Apparently the big discussion some time back was focussed on the floppy disc to save. It is kinda funny how durable the old rotary phone handset image is to signify a phone call.
There is A LOT of really good stuff out there on icon/interface design. I especially agree with this guy - especially on such things as "design for the lowest common denominator and allow advanced users to customize. That article links to a bunch of fun stuff as well - including The Best Icon is a Text Label - worth skimming if only for the explanation of clothes tag washing instruction icons! I know I’ve read that researchers have handed tablets to children the world over, and within minutes, they figure out how to click away on them. But for me, I’m thinking it might be better to try to force everyone to learn maybe 20-50 English words like save, send, copy…
Just a guess, but I believe anything resembling a stylus or pen or brush will be immediately recognizable as having to do with writing. There are so many different models of pens out there; the exact model does not matter, nor can it be really distinctive in an icon.
A more striking example is @Darren_Garrison 's example where the “icons” are utterly useless, and only the text tells you what the options really do.
I’ve seen some inclined styluses/pens as icons, that just looked like slashes to me. And I think one site I don’t use (Twitter? Instagram?) has a stylized QUILL!
A quill is a type of pen; it’s pointy, isn’t it? I did anticipate your comment, though, and perhaps the pen/stylus/quill should trail a line of ink, just to be absolutely clear what is going on:
(that is the first icon that came up, but it just goes to show you now the designer failed to put 5 seconds of thought into it: the quill looks like it is ahead of the ink rather than behind it—it could be a previous line, though—, there is no nib, and the feathers are not trimmed like you need to do to a real quill before you can write with it. Then again, it’s an icon, not a photorealistic image)
Icons versus English aren’t the only choices! There’s a whole sub-industry built around globalizing language interfaces in electronic devices. My phone could probably hold the entire Library of Congress; it can certainly hold phone commands represented in all the languages worth holding.
@Dinsdale: I know the main theme here is icons that need reworking due to obsolescence. But how about icons that should be reworked because they’re just plain confusing?
I nominate the increase/decrease decimal places pair of icons in Excel. I’m pretty good in Excel, but I’ll be damned if I get this right, upon first click, any more than 50% of the time.
Like I said - I found the articles on this subject fascinating. Not only what goes into an effective icon, but where functions should be positioned on the screen. Waiting for an opportunity to impress the ladies by referring to “Fitts’s law”…
I dunno! My honest-to-god practice is to click one at random. If that gives the desired result, great! If it doesn’t, then switch icons, click once to reverse the actions of the first click, then click again as many times as needed.
[takes a break to go check it out]
OK, you are right. I’m not sure that will change my strategy, though. That moment spent parsing the icon will probably take me longer than my current practice.
to mean “initiate a connection”, and 
to mean “connect and transmit” and all sorts of different meanings.
