Style - Describe Figures and Tables

• A table is a square box full of numbers.
• A figure is anything else: picture, graph, map, photo, diagram, etc.
• I will show you how to make these in class
  • For the APA rules for formatting Tables and Figures, see Invention manuals
  • For Word formatted examples, see “Style - using Figures and Tables.docx” in the shared materials folder. Ask me for the link.

This page is about style - the language you use in the text when you refer to Tables and Figures.

Naming phrases

Name the Fig/Table	verbs	Optional Time phrase for change	situation/change phrase
As Figure 1 above	shows	over the last 5 years	X was Y.
As shown in Figure 1,	illustrates	, in the last two days	X has become Y.
As the chart above,	describes	recently	X is increasing.
As Table 3	indicates	between 2007 and 2009	X increased.
As the graph below	suggests	in 2008	X was increasing.
As seen in Table 2	,

Description phrases

• For more “change” phrases, see [[Style - describing change]]
• Try “drawing attention” phrases, usually with an adjective
  • (“The most interesting result can be seen in the X column, which shows that Y”)
  • comparative phrases (X is less common than Y)
  • superlative phrases (X is the least common)
• Other useful styles (these are worksheets, I’ll add links later)
  • write a cause-effect sentence about what it means (“The result of this is”)
  • write a compare-contrast sentence (“While in Fig. 1…, Fig 2 shows that”)
  • write a partition sentence (“There are three main points visible in this graph”)
  • use hedging to cast doubt on the reliability of the data
  • use summary or summary-response pattern
  • write a time-order sentence to describe a change graph in more detail

Practice

• Visit http://www.gapminder.org/videos/
• Choose a graph. Describe it to your partner to draw.