Genogram notation has three layers, and most confusion about it comes from mixing them up. The first layer is the people: a square for a man, a circle for a woman, a diamond where gender is unknown. The second layer is how people are joined — married, cohabiting, engaged, dating — drawn as the horizontal line between two figures. The third layer sits on top of both and records how the relationship actually feels: close, distant, in conflict, cut off.
A family tree only ever has the first two layers. The third is the genogram's whole reason for existing, and it is the one worth learning properly.
The key below is not a picture of a notation key. It is generated directly from the vocabulary this editor draws with, so every stroke shown is the exact stroke the tool produces, and the two can never drift apart the way a hand-maintained reference eventually does.
The notation key
Emotional relationships
closewarm, bonded
distantlimited contact
conflictongoing tension
cut-offestranged, no contact
enmeshedover-involved, diffuse boundaries
fusedmerged identity, undifferentiated
estrangeddeliberately avoided
companionpet / companion animal
litter-matesfrom the same litter
bonded pairinseparable pair
Relationships
marriedmarriage
cohab.cohabitation
engagedengagement
datingdating
Parent–child links
biologicalbiological
adopt.adopted
fosterfoster
stepstep
raisingraising
Worked example
A genogram using the emotional-tie notation. People below are rendered from the live diagram.