Total return
Everything an investment produced over a period, the change in price and the income it paid, expressed together as one percentage of the starting value.
Total return is the whole of what an investment gave you: what happened to its price, plus everything it paid out along the way. Written out, it is the ending value minus the beginning value, plus any income received, all divided by the beginning value. A share bought at 100 that ends the year at 105 having paid 3 in dividends returned 8 percent, not 5 percent. The extra 3 percentage points are the income, which is all a yield measures on its own.
The standard convention is that income is reinvested the moment it arrives, which is why total return figures compound and why a total return index pulls steadily away from the price version of the same index. Over a decade or more that gap is not a rounding difference. Dividends reinvested go on to earn returns of their own, and the compound interest calculator shows how quickly that second layer builds.
The error to watch for is a mismatched comparison. Judging a fund's total return against a price-only index credits the fund with income the benchmark was never given, and judging an income investment on yield alone ignores what its price did. Compare like with like, and make sure both figures cover the same period.
Total return on its own also says nothing about how long the period was or what inflation did to it. An annualised return fixes the first, and a real rate fixes the second.