15 tips for designing flawless tables and figures

Category: Education

Tables and figures are vital aspects of your academic paper. If designed effectively, they can also reduce your word count drastically. Visually appealing tables and figures give your paper a much required face-lift as well. Therefore, your tables and figures must be clear, informative, and aesthetically appealing. For our academic paper editing and proofreading services, the following tips are used to ensure that your tables and figures are flawless, attractive, and effective. The titles to your tables and figures should be concise and informative. They should be clear and comprehensible without referring to the main text. The tables and figures themselves should be self-explanatory. The tables and figures should be clear, easily comprehensible, well-labelled, and attractively designed. The main text should not contain information mentioned in the tables and figures. Your target journal’s instructions regarding the file formats, title, style, font, image resolution, number of tables and figures that can be included, etc., must be followed when preparing your tables and figures. Seek permission of the copyright holder when including an already-published table or figure. Tables: The details and values in your tables should be consistent with your main text (e.g., group names, treatment names, procedures, abbreviation, and statistical data). Use the “Table” function rather than the “Tabs” function, when creating tables using Microsoft word. If your data appears to be repetitive in two or more tables then consider combining them or deleting the repetitive data. Combine large amounts of data and incorporate them as columns. Tables with extensive data can also be included in the “Appendix” section. Figures: Every part of the figure and figure labels must be legible and clearly visible against the background. The important parts of every figure must be labelled and details, such as quantitative units, scale bars in images and maps, longitudes, latitudes, and legends in maps/schematics, must be provided. Obtain written and informed consent from subjects whose photographs you will use in your paper. Use the correct figure format. (e.g., proportions are represented using bar graphs or pie charts) Exclude experimental details and include the key message and explanations for abbreviations or symbols in your figure legends. You can present complex data from your study in a concise and attractive manner using tables and figures. This not only helps grab attention of a wide and fickle audience but also enables your readers to assimilate the summarized information provided in your main text by flipping through your tables and figures. Hope this post helps you design better and more effective tables. Happy writing!!