Input/output (data)
Data going in or coming out: reading input or producing output, without saying on what medium. The input/output symbol is a parallelogram, a rectangle slanted to one side.
Easily confused with
How to read it
The parallelogram is the basic data symbol. ANSI X3.5-1970 calls it the input/output symbol: making information available for processing, or recording processed information. IBM’s manual says it stands for any type of medium or data and is useful where the medium doesn’t matter. ISO 5807:1985 calls the same shape simply “data”, the medium being unspecified.
Where the medium does matter, the standards replace the parallelogram with a specialised shape: a Document for printed output, Manual input for a keyboard, Cylinder (magnetic disk) for files.
Also searched as: data symbol, flowchart input/output (data), input/output (data) symbol, parallelogram flowchart.
Look-alikes
The Manual input symbol has a flat bottom and a top edge that slopes up to the right, with two vertical sides. A Process rectangle has square corners. Both the 1970 American standard and ISO 5807 draw the parallelogram leaning to the right.
Read next
- Next in Flowchart symbolsPredefined processA named process that is defined somewhere else, such as a subroutine or module. The symbol is a rectangle with an extra vertical line just inside each end.
- The same shape in European flagsFlag of GreeceGreece’s flag is nine horizontal stripes, five blue and four white, with a white cross on a blue square in the top corner by the pole. Law 851/1978 fixes the design but gives it no meaning; readings of the nine stripes, such as the nine syllables of “Freedom or Death”, are popular tradition.
More flowchart symbols
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols drawn with squares and rectangles.
Sources
- Flowchart Symbols and Their Usage in Information Processing, ANSI X3.5-1970, adopted for federal use as FIPS PUB 24, American National Standards Institute; National Bureau of Standards (NIST), Section 3.2.1
- Flowcharting Techniques, IBM Data Processing Techniques, Form C20-8152, International Business Machines Corporation (bitsavers.org), System flowcharts: basic symbols
- Information processing: Documentation symbols and conventions for data, program and system flowcharts, program network charts and system resources charts, ISO 5807:1985, first edition (preview pages), International Organization for Standardization (iTeh Standards preview), Section 9.1.1.1
- 10.3: Flowcharting, Kenneth Leroy Busbee, CSP31A C Programming, Delta College (LibreTexts Engineering), Input/Output
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
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