Field guide
The style guide nobody opens twice
Which chart should this be?
- Shape
- Telling them apart
- Plates
- lede · matrix · views · trend · histogram · table · cheatsheet
- Why
- A field guide is consulted, never read, so it must be arranged for looking-up. `matrix` puts the shape of the data down one side and the candidate against the top. `views` earns its place here more than anywhere: one dataset drawn three ways is the argument that the chart is a choice, and it cannot be made in prose. Close with the shortest test that separates them.
Most bad charts are not badly drawn. They are the wrong chart, chosen before anyone asked what the data was shaped like.
What the data is, against what to draw
One month of sales, drawn three ways
The short version
- 1
If the reader will quote a number from it, use a table.
- 2
If they will quote a direction, use a line.
- 3
Never a pie chart with more than three slices. Nobody compares angles.
- 4
If you cannot say what question the chart answers, it does not go in.
This is a sample. To author the same thing about your own subject, just name it. Your assistant can read this template, and will write you the same document about what you know.
Using the Ario tools, make me the "Field guide"
template for telling our four plan tiers apart.
Show me the shape before you build anything.New here? How to connect one.
Other samples