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'''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 the speech or thoughts of a given character in the comic.

There is often a formal distinction between the balloon that indicates thoughts and the one that indicates words spoken aloud.

The balloon that conveys subjective thoughts is often referred to as a thought bubble.