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  • In cartoons, the lines drawn around a character's head to indicate shock or surprise.

    April 22, 2008

  • Mort Walker (Beetle Bailey creator) coined the term emanata."

    Examples of emanata include: (1) lightbulb above a character's head to indicate an idea; (2) indication of sleep by a saw cutting a log or a line of "zzzz"s; (3) the use of dotted lines to indicate a line of sight, and (4) daggers instead of dotted lines to indicate an evil look.

    Emanata is actually the feminine form of the Italian adjective emanato, which means radiated, promulgated, issued.

    January 17, 2009

  • "emanata - named by cartoonist Mort Walker, the lines, bursts, and squiggles that indicate emotion or heat from the sun"

    Ivan Brunetti, Comics: Easy as ABC! (New York: Toon Books, 2019), p. 23

    July 28, 2020