Level: Can be customized for writers at all levels.

Context: This assignment focuses on visualized and graphical information and on asking students to consider how their audience (and that audience’s knowledge base and identity) shapes the way in which information is presented, explained, and contextualized. This could be done as an in-class assignment, alone or in groups, or as a homework assignment.

Assignment:

Often we see information or data presented to us in a visual form—tables, figures, charts, graphs, etc. It is vital that data be communicated clearly in order for that information to be both understood and taken seriously. In the AWWE interview with a Lab Manager at the National Institute of Health, we hear about the importance of clarity and consideration of audience when writing successful captions and other text about graphical data:

If your figures don’t reinforce what the writing says and if the writing doesn’t match up with the figures, then you’re never going to get it published. […] So actually what becomes the most important writing is actually the captions for the pictures. The thing that actually describes what you’re looking at – that needs to be letter perfect. […] A successful caption makes the figure seem as not busy as possible. The worst thing you want is a lot of pictures and a very little bit of explanation, so it just looks like a busy figure. ‘Cause the risk you run with science is people just tune out. If there’s a bunch of figures with a bunch of subfigures and the caption doesn’t thoroughly explain them, or explain them in a way that’s intuitive, then they’ll just gloss over it, and then you’ve lost most of your impact. […] I’ve learned a lot about writing captions in this job, because we do have these beautiful pictures, and that’s kind of the bait. It gets people to look at the paper. And so you’ll have a beautiful picture of a neuron– our neuron is actually beautiful, it has this sinusoidal curve, like an s, so it’s very easy to find when you’re looking at a bunch of neurons in a brain, so that’s useful, but also it just makes for some great pictures. So you have that, beautiful green or red or green/red/yellow neuron against a black background – gorgeous – and then next to that, you’ll have a plot, or you’ll have some numbers. So you’ve got the bait, […], and it’s all about constructing that so that the reader enjoys it and doesn’t get bogged down by too much information.

In this interview, we see several important elements to consider when writing about graphical data:

1. Is my caption/writing accurately expressing the information/data shown on the chart/graph/table?
2. Do I have too many figures/subfigures without enough proper explanation and contextualization of the data? Is it clear what this all means?
3. Have I considered my audience (what they know, how they are likely to see/understand the graphics presented, their level of interest, etc) in how I’ve written about this data?

The interviewee is writing captions and text about visual data in scholarly articles written to other scientists, or experts in that field. Their knowledge of that particular audience and genre drives a lot of the decisions made in their writing. To get a sense of how different audiences can shape and direct our own writing choices in this mode, please follow the instructions below:

1. Choose a graphical data source: a chart, graph, infographic, table, etc from a reputable research institution. For example, you might visit the graphics page of the Bureau of Labor Statistics or something similar.
2. Read the data source closely and make sure you have a firm understanding of what the source is expressing.
3. For each of the three different audiences respond to the following questions:

Writing for Experts in the Field:

• Compose an appropriate one to two sentence caption that accurately expresses the figure itself and the data/information included in the chosen graphic.
• Compose some accompanying text (about 40-50 words) that highlights any important relationships, data points, or features of the graphic.
• Describe how the audience (Experts) influenced the information you chose to include. How did knowing the audience affect your word choice and your tone?
• Based on this audience, what do you think a caption and the accompanying text you composed were meant to achieve (purpose)? How did you go about achieving that purpose?

Someone in your Peer Group:

• Compose an appropriate one to two sentence caption that accurately expresses the figure itself and the data/information included in the chosen graphic.
• Compose some accompanying text (about 40-50 words) which highlights any important relationships, data points, or features of the graphic.
• Describe how the audience (Peers) influenced the information you chose to include. How did knowing the audience affect your word choice and your tone?
• Based on this audience, what do you think a caption and the accompanying text you composed were meant to achieve (purpose)? How did you go about achieving that purpose?

Someone Who May be Skeptical of the Data:

• Compose an appropriate one to two sentence caption that accurately expresses the figure itself and the data/information included in the chosen graphic.
• Compose some accompanying text (about 40-50 words) which highlights any important relationships, data points, or features of the graphic.
• Describe how the audience (Skeptics) influenced the information you chose to include. How did knowing the audience affect your word choice and your tone?
• Based on this audience, what do you think a caption and the accompanying text you composed were meant to achieve (purpose)? How did you go about achieving that purpose?

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.