Sign languages are natural languages developed and used in all parts of the world where there are deaf people. Although different from each other, these languages, that have been exposed to varying degrees of communitisation and institutionalisation, share a significant number of common structures. As in the study of any other language, the linguistic study of visual-gestural languages, now a scientific field in its own right, faces the unavoidable problem of their graphical representation. This paper provides an overview, albeit non-exhaustive, of existing solutions to this challenge.We begin by reviewing the main difficulties posed by the graphical representation of these languages, which have no writing system of their own, taking into consideration their modal and structural characteristics (section 2). We then present the major types of graphical representations that have been developed for sign languages, noting their respective strengths and limitations (sections 3 and 4). In section 5, we outline the problems that remain unsolved at this point, if one aims to achieve transcription of a growing number of sign language corpora that would meet research needs while respecting the original features particular to these languages.