Arts and Humanities Commons^™

04.07: Tables, Graphs, And Charts, David Mcmurrey, Tamara Powell

Open Technical Communication

Upon completion of this chapter, readers will be able to:
1. Distinguish between tables, charts, and graphs.
2. Identify chief characteristics of tables, charts, and graphs.
3. Identify and apply best practices in creating tables, charts, and graphs in technical communication.

21. Tables, Charts, Graphs, David Mcmurray, Tamara Powell

Sexy Technical Communications

One of the nice things about technical writing courses is that most of the papers have graphics in them—or at least they should. A lot of professional, technical writing contains graphics—drawings, diagrams, photographs, illustrations of all sorts, tables, pie charts, bar charts, line graphs, flow charts, and so on. Graphics are important in technical communication. We learn more from a document when graphics are included (Gatlin, 1988). In fact, people learn about 1/3 more from a document with graphics than without (Levie and Lentz, 1982). A recent study found that readers learn faster and are better able to use the …