  The study of representations of affine Hecke algebras has led to a new notion
of shapes and standard Young tableaux which works for the root system of any
finite Coxeter group. This paper is completely independent of affine Hecke
algebra theory and is purely combinatorial. We define generalized shapes and
standard Young tableaux and show that these new objects coincide with the
classical ones for root systems of Type A. The classical notions of conjugation
of shapes, ribbon shapes, axial distances, and the row reading and column
reading standard tableaux, have natural generalizations to the root system
case. In the final section we give an interpretation of the shapes and standard
tableaux for root systems of Type C which is in a form similar to classical
theory of shapes and standard tableaux.
