Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
information successfully communicated and not necessarily any space
savings.
If the graphic is a summary of numeric information, then the caption is a
summary of the graphic. This textual element should be considered part of
the graphic design and should be carefully constructed rather than placed as
an afterthought. Readers, for their own use, often copy graphics and tables
that appear in articles and reports. Failure on the part of the graphic
designer to completely document the graphic in the caption can result in
gross misrepresentation in these cases. It is not the presenter who copied
the graph who suffers, but the original author who generated the graphic.
Tufte [1983] advises that graphics “should be closely integrated with the
statistical and verbal descriptions of the data set” and that the caption of the
graphic clearly provides the best avenue for ensuring this integration.
Rule 9: Captions for your graphical presentations must be com-
plete. Do not skimp on your descriptions.
The most effective method for writing a caption is to show the graphic to
a third party. Allow them to question the meaning and information pre-
sented. Finally, take your explanations and write them all down as a series of
simple sentences for the caption. Readers rarely, if ever, complain that the
caption is too long. If they do complain that the caption is too long, it is a
clear indication that the graphic design is poor. Were the graphic more
effective, the associated caption would be of a reasonable length.
Depending on the purpose of your report, editors may challenge the
duplication of information within the caption and within the text. While
we may not win every skirmish with those that want to abbreviate our
reports, we are reminded that it is common for others to reproduce only
tables and graphics from our reports for other purposes. Detailed captions
help alleviate misrepresentations and other out-of-context references we
certainly want to avoid, so we endeavor to win as many of these battles
with editors as possible.
Other text elements that are important in graphical design are the axes
labels, title, and symbols that can be replaced by textual identifiers. Recog-
nizing that the plot region of the graph presents numerical data, the axis
must declare associated units of measure. If the axis is transformed (log or
otherwise), the associated label must present this information as well. The
title should be short and serves as the title for the graphic and associated
caption. By itself, the title usually does not contain enough information to
fully interpret the graphic in isolation.
When symbols are used to denote points from the data that can be
identified by meaningful labels, there are a few choices to consider for
improving the information content of the graphic. First, we can replace all
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