labels - Verbiage and Icons for Delete vs Remove

In the application I'm working on, we have two forms of getting rid of an item.

• Delete: Permanently deleting an item from the system. Once removed, the data is gone.


• Remove: Removing a linked item from a group within the system. Data is not deleted and item can be added back into a group

Got 2 related questions

1. Is "Delete" and "Remove" as describe above common verbiage for these two actions?


2. What icons should be associated to these actions?

Currently I've been using the Trash icon to represent Delete and "X" to represent Remove. I have comments from people in Dev saying Trash icon represent something that is recoverable when Delete isn't, would "X" be more representation for Delete.

I've also considered relabelling Remove as "Unlink/Unassociate", but those do not fit well since the user is putting items into a group instead of loosely associating them together. An un-link icon also has a more complex form and is less easy to recognize as compared to Trash and X.

Answer

Depending on the kind of group and association of your app, I'd suggest to go for something like "remove from this group" or "unpublish" or "detach". To avoid mystakes be more precise and replace "delete" by "delete item".

Regarding icons there is lots of technics and methods to generate ideas (you can find them on this site and others). The delete link should not be a problem and as regards of the remove one, try to symbolize the action.

Some quick metaphors :

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