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Graphics > Using Illustrations in Documents


“A picture’s worth a thousand words!”

The objective of using an illustration is to help your reader absorb facts and ideas you want to convey. I use the term illustration here to refer to both graphics and tables. When used well, an illustration can convey an idea that words alone could never really make clear and thus serve as a functional, working part of the document. Be careful not to over-illustrate; use a graphic only when you are sure that it makes a direct contribution to your reader’s understanding of your subject.

Creating Illustrations
When creating illustrations, always consider your objective and your reader. For example, you would use different illustrations of the international space station for a high school science class than you would for a group of engineers or technicians. Many of the attributes of good writing – simplicity, clarity, conciseness, and directness – are equally important in creating and using illustrations.

The most common types of illustrations are photographs, graphs, tables, drawings, flowcharts, organizational charts, schematic diagrams, and maps. What you are writing, the material itself, will normally suggest what type of illustration is needed.


Some Guidelines
Each type of illustration has unique strengths and weaknesses. The guidelines presented here apply to most visual material you might use to supplement or clarify the information in your text. The following tips will help you create and present your illustrations:

  1. Make it clear in the text why the illustration is included. An illustration showing an important process flow, feature, or system may be the focus of an entire text discussion. The complexity of the illustration will affect the discussion, as will the background your readers bring to the information.

  2. Keep the illustration as brief and simple as possible by including only information necessary to understanding the text.
  3. Try to present only one type of information in each illustration.

  4. Keep terminology consistent. Do not refer to something as a “proportion” in the text and as a “percentage” in the illustration.

  5. Specify the proportions used or include a relative scale when appropriate.

  6. Wherever possible, position the lettering of any explanatory text on the illustration horizontally.

  7. Give each illustration a concise title – numbered and placed immediately below it – that clearly describes its contents. Table numbers and titles immediately precede the table. Illustrations – drawings, charts, etc. – are generically referred to as “figures,” while tables are referred to simply as “tables.”

  8. Call out the illustration or table in your text by its appropriate figure or table number to guide the reader to it.

  9. The illustration will illuminate or strongly reinforce the writing, and should be placed as close as possible to the text that discusses it. However, no illustration should precede its first text mention. Its appearance without introduction will confuse readers. If the illustration is peripheral to the discussion, note it in the text and place it in an appendix or other back matter.

  10. Allow adequate white space on the page around and within the illustration.



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