5 Types of Graphics For a Tech Writer
by Bradley Nice, Content Manager at ClickHelp — all-in-one help authoring tool
What makes an effective marketing strategy? I’d say content! The messages on your website are the key to the progress of your business goals. This content should make readers want to read it, and it should be created and designed with people’s engagement and wanting to connect in mind. Graphics are what you need for this!
It is a big challenge to transform complicated facts into a simple and accessible piece of information. Graphics help to simplify complex material and make it easily understood. They give a fancy touch to the blog post and share lots of information with your readers in a small space. Today let’s talk about the types of graphics that you can use in your technical writing.
- Pie chart. Pie charts show proportion which is measured in percentages of fractions. So if you have some data that you’d like to represent in multiple portions, you can use the pie chart. Pie charts work best with displaying data divided into about 6–7 categories. Notice that the slices go clockwise from largest to smallest.
2. Map. When you need to describe data related to a location the map can help you. Because it is easier to show on the map than to explain in text and in the latter case there’s a big chance that the readers won’t understand the information. The map clearly shows the proper location without confusion. There are various plugins available that you can use to create a good map graphic.
3. Bullet chart. The bullet chart visualizes performance against a target tracking and the results are displayed in a single column. The chart may contain one or many columns, and it looks like a thermometer.
4. Column Chart. Column charts are other ways to represent data effortlessly. It uses vertical rectangles and is very convenient to show the comparison between various categories.
5. Scatter Plot. The scatter plot displays two variables. Their values determine the points’ location. We can understand the relationship between the two variables by analyzing the presence of the pieces of data.
Technical writers should always write clearly and curtly, but sometimes the tech writers need the assistance of charts to present the whole picture. The type of chart to use depends on what you need to communicate to the audience. Some graphic designs are more flexible than others. As a simple example, to show percentages, a pie chart would be appropriate. Still, you could also have used a scatter diagram with characters or figures instead to provide more interest. It’s up to you which graphic image to use to get your explanation across to the audience. However, there are some common guidelines for graphics in documents that you should keep in mind:
- Use color, but not too much as it can confuse.
- Sometimes adding pictures of items or subjects is helpful to make the chart more appealing.
- If the images cannot fit on a sheet of paper or on one screen, you can use numbers or alphabets to point to another location to continue the diagram.
- Graphic charts are great at immediately presenting visual, quantitative analyses at a glance.
- The areas in your text with lots of numeric data in relation to two or more things are ideal for tables or even charts or graphs.
- Always discuss tables or graphs in the preceding text. Don’t just throw any graphics out there unexplained.
- Use a title. The title should be placed above the table; for charts and graphs, it should be below.
A lot of professional, technical writing contains graphics like pie charts, line graphs, flow charts, etc. Once you learn how to put visuals into your writing, it will help clarify the information presented in the document. They also provide an additional benefit: they help break up a continuous text making the document more visually appealing.
Have a nice day!
Bradley Nice, Content Manager at ClickHelp.com — best online documentation tool for SaaS vendors
