Off-page connector
The flow continues on another page. The off-page connector is a five-sided shape like a baseball home plate, with a label or page reference inside.
Easily confused with
How to read it
It does the job of a Connector across a page break: the flow leaves at one off-page connector and resumes at another with the same identification on a later page. IBM’s flowcharting manual describes it as a special-purpose connector for exit from or entry to a page, placed so that its point shows the direction of flow, with the identification inside. A course text at Delta College says it looks like a pocket on a shirt.
Also searched as: flowchart off-page connector, off-page connector symbol, off page reference.
Differences by standard
The 1970 American standard, ANSI X3.5, has no separate off-page symbol: it uses the round connector for page breaks too and writes the chart page and coordinates of the matching connector above it. The pentagon is IBM’s, from its flowcharting manual and template, A Jet Propulsion Laboratory report on alternatives to the ANSI flowchart (JPL Publication 84-99) counted the need for off-page connections among the drawbacks of ANSI symbols for large programs, which take up excessive page space.
Look-alikes
The on-page Connector is a circle. The Decision diamond also has a point but has paths leaving it.
Read next
- Next in Flowchart symbolsFlowlineThe order of steps: a flowline joins two symbols, and the flow runs along it from one to the next. It is a straight line, with an arrowhead where the direction needs showing.
- The same shape in African flagsFlag of the ComorosThe Comoros flag is four horizontal stripes, yellow, white, red and blue from the top, with a green triangle along the pole holding a white crescent and four white stars in a line between its tips. Norway’s Store norske leksikon explains the crescent as the symbol of Islam and the four stars as the four islands of the Comoros; Lex says the four stripes are said to stand for the islands too.
More flowchart symbols
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols drawn with squares and rectangles or triangles.
Sources
- Flowcharting Techniques, IBM Data Processing Techniques, Form C20-8152, International Business Machines Corporation (bitsavers.org), Special processing symbols; summary of program flowchart symbols
- 10.3: Flowcharting, Kenneth Leroy Busbee, CSP31A C Programming, Delta College (LibreTexts Engineering), Connectors
- 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), Sections 4.4.1 and 4.8.2
- Flowcharting with D-Charts, JPL Publication 84-99, Donald D. Meyer, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA (Internet Archive), Section 1
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
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