Bar charts in considered technical writing

If you’re writing white papers, or you’re writing a research report to convince people of something, perhaps politically motivated, then you’ll want to use bar charts. These work exceptionally well when you’re trying to compare things, and it’s very easy to put a few figures in a paragraph and then refer to the draft in the sidebar, or below, which better illustrates and helps the reader visualize the date.

The two most common types of charts or graphs, and the most easily understood, are bar charts and pie charts. Bar charts actually look great in 3D or when the bars are in 3D on a two dimensional plane with the numbers on the sides. Full 3D bar charts have become very popular thanks to word processing programs like Microsoft and Word Perfect.

Another wonderful thing about using charts and graphs is that it breaks up word-filled paragraphs and helps the human reading to quickly move through the data and understand what they are reading extremely quickly. When I advise members of our think tank who are working on reports, research papers, or even eBooks, I remind them that it’s important to make good use of white space and plenty of visual data.

Sometimes it’s not always what you say, but how you say it. When preparing technical writing documents, this is extremely true. Bar charts are the simplest comparisons you can use and are easily understood without further annotation. In fact, I hope you’ll consider using more graphics in your technical writing in the future. Think about it.

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