DIAGRAMMING

“A picture is worth a thousand words,” once noted Confucius, the Chinese scholar. But there is a corollary that he failed to add: “And a picture shouldn’t take a thousand words to explain.” Yet too many pictures seem to follow the corollary rather than the Confucian wisdom.

The benefits of pictures are many. They communicate a lot of information in a short period of time, and they encourage questions that further clarify the message. They also prevent misunderstandings that often arise from text.

for Effective Diagramming

• Provide a legend.
• Leave plenty of white space.
• Provide useful header information (e.g., title, date, page number).
• Do not use more than nine objects on a page; otherwise, it clutters the screen.
• Make the print legible.
• Use color sparingly, only to emphasize a point.
• Use symbols consistently.