Speech balloons (also speech bubbles, dialogue balloons, or word balloons) are a graphic convention used most commonly in comic books, comics, and cartoons to allow words (and much less often, pictures) to be understood as representing a character's speech or thoughts. A formal distinction is often made between the balloon that indicates speech and the one that indicates thoughts; the balloon that conveys thoughts is often referred to as a thought bubble or conversation cloud. History One of the earliest antecedents to the modern speech bubble were the "speech scrolls", wispy lines that connected first-person speech to the mouths of the speakers in Mesoamerican art between 600 and 900 AD. Earlier, paintings, depicting stories in subsequent frames, using descriptive text resembling bubbles-text, were used in murals, one such example witten in Greek, dating to the 2nd century, found in Capitolias, today in Jordan. In Western graphic art, labels that reveal what a pictured figure is saying have appeared since at least the 13th century. These were in common European use by the early 16th century. Word balloons (also known as "banderoles") began appearing in 18th-century printed broadsides, and political cartoons from the American Revolution (including some published by Benjamin Franklin) often used themas did cartoonist James Gillray in Britain. They later became disused, but by 1904 had regained their popularity, although they were still considered novel enough to require explanation. With the development of the comics industry during the 20th century, the appearance of speech balloons has become increasingly standardized, though the formal conventions that have evolved in different cultures (USA as opposed to Japan, for example) can be quite distinct. In the UK in 1825 The Glasgow Looking Glass, regarded as the world's first comic magazine, was created by English satirical cartoonist William Heath. Containing the world's first comic strip, it also made it the first to use speech bubbles. Richard F. Outcault's Yellow Kid is generally credited as the first American comic strip character. His words initially appeared on his yellow shirt, but word balloons very much like those used presently were added almost immediately, as early as 1896. By the start of the 20th century, word balloons were ubiquitous; since that time, few American comic strips and comic books have relied on captions, notably Hal Foster's Prince Valiant and the early Tarzan comic strip during the 1930s. In Europe, where text comics were more common, the adoption