Résumé | We introduce a canonical decomposition of strongly connected graphs that we call the *atomic decomposition*. We can construct it in linear time from the canonical decomposition in 3-connected components (by Tutte) of the considered graph. With it, we study *Gauss words*: these words are associated with self-intersecting closed curves in the plane.We characterize, up to homeomorphism, all such curves with a given Gauss word. We extend this characterization to tuples of words, associated with tuples of closed curves in the plane.
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