Terminal (start and end)
The start or the end of a flowchart. The terminal is a flat oval, a rectangle with fully rounded ends, with a word such as Start or End inside.
Easily confused with
How to read it
A flowchart begins at a terminal and runs until it reaches another. The American standard of 1970, ANSI X3.5, calls it the terminal, interrupt symbol and gives start, stop, halt, delay and interrupt as its uses; IBM’s flowcharting manual describes it as the beginning, end, or a point of interruption in a program. The standard draws it much wider than it is tall, in the proportion 1 to 3/8.
A terminal also opens and closes a detailed flowchart that another chart refers to: the 1970 standard says the terminal symbol shall be the first and last symbol of that detailed representation.
Also searched as: flowchart terminal (start and end), oval flowchart, start end symbol, terminal (start and end) symbol.
Look-alikes
A small circle is a Connector, a jump to another point on the chart, not an end. On an ER diagram an oval is an attribute, and in a UML use case diagram a horizontal ellipse is a use case.
Read next
- Next in Flowchart symbolsProcessA step in which something is done: a calculation, an assignment or any other operation. The process symbol is a plain rectangle with the step written inside.
- In UML diagram symbolsInitial nodeA small filled black circle is the initial node, where the flow of a UML activity diagram starts. In a state machine diagram the same dot is the initial pseudostate, with an arrow to the first state.
More flowchart symbols
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols drawn with curves and waves or 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), Sections 3.4.2 and 4.9.2
- Flowcharting Techniques, IBM Data Processing Techniques, Form C20-8152, International Business Machines Corporation (bitsavers.org), Flowcharting symbols and their descriptions
- 10.3: Flowcharting, Kenneth Leroy Busbee, CSP31A C Programming, Delta College (LibreTexts Engineering), Terminal
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
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