What do the triangles, circles, and squares mean in the context of manga?


I was reading Crayon Shin-chan—a Japanese manga—and came across a frame where
the characters' speech bubbles contain circles, triangles, and crosses where
words should be. I asked a couple of my Japanese friends about what the shapes
meant but none of them could tell me what they meant or why they were used.

[![A frame from Crayon Shin-
chan](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Xjrfb.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Xjrfb.jpg)




Those are just placeholders. You should understand that instead of a
meaningful text those symbols were inserted in order to avoid putting actual
text. That can be done for various reasons: censor a word, make the reader
unaware of something the characters are aware of.

That being said, here, judging from the image the characters seem like they
are quarreling, thus we might think that the placeholders are just used to
cover up inappropriate words (for the audience).




Those are just placeholders. You should understand that instead of a
meaningful text those symbols were inserted in order to avoid putting actual
text. That can be done for various reasons: censor a word, make the reader
unaware of something the characters are aware of.

That being said, here, judging from the image the characters seem like they
are quarreling, thus we might think that the placeholders are just used to
cover up inappropriate words (for the audience).

