The article mainly deals with the concept of symptom elements and the relationship with symptom standardization， and provides thoughts and methods of standardization of symptom terms. Symptom elements are description of symptoms， or the part of symptom terms that are irrelevant to diseased sites. Symptom elements provide the nature of symptoms， so symptoms of a same kind often share common elements. Elements are inseparable to symptoms， and are classified into 20 categories， such as sensory abnormality， functional obstacle. The combination of symptom elements and anatomical parts and symptom lists can achieve eventually the standardization of symptom terms.