CHARACTERISTICS OF GOOD 

 ILLUSTRATIONS 



The reader's first impression of your paper is greatly- 

 influenced by the illustrations. It is your responsibility 

 as the author to see that your line drawings meet five basic 

 requisites: accuracy, completeness, legibility, uniformity, 

 and conformance with standard practice in graphic presenta- 

 tion. If you are using photographs, submit only those of 

 good quality. An otherwise excellent paper can be impaired 

 by amateurish, substandard illustrations. 



In the following sections we shall discuss briefly the 

 characteristics of good charts and graphs, artist's illustra- 

 tions, and photographs. 



Charts and Graplis 



ACCURACY 



Accuracy is highly important in any publication and 

 especially so in technical papers- -an inaccurate graph can 

 mislead your reader. Always recheck the data on the 

 finished drawing; be certain the draftsman did not mis- 

 interpret some detail of your penciled sketch. 



Watch for errors in scales and scale captions. In a 

 series of figures in which the scale changes from millimeters 

 to inches or from ounces to pounds, for exannple, errors 

 easily creep in. 



Doublecheck the references to the figures in the text. 

 Revisions of the manuscript sometimes require renumber- 

 ing the figures. Adding or deleting figures also encourages 

 errors in the text references. 



The figure legends must describe the figures accurately. 



COMPLETENESS 



Give your illustrations the time and care they warrant. 

 Be certain that they contain all the essentials needed to 

 make them understandable, that drawings requiring labeling 

 are adequately labeled, that all segments of a bar graph are 

 given in the key, that all geographic features mentioned 

 in text are shown on the map, and that appropriate scales 

 are shown for draAvings made to scale. 



While completeness is desirable, unnecessary detail is 

 not. Does the graph look cluttered and confused because 



