Designing documents

Choosing appropriate visuals

When deciding what type of visual to use in a document, consider the ways in which different types of visuals can support your purpose and help your readers:

To discuss a conflict among countries, supply a map.
To illustrate an autobiographical essay, scan an image of yourself as a baby or at some important moment in your life.
To explain a wastewater treatment process or activities at an archaeological dig, include a diagram or an illustration.

Your topic and the kind of information you wish to convey will also help you decide what types of visuals to use. For example, in a college essay on the benefits of following a vegetarian diet, you might use several visuals:

a table to compare resources needed to produce different food types
a line graph to show a trend in meat consumption
a photograph to show vegetarian food options
a pie chart for the percentage of vegetarian meals eaten by a population
a diagram for diet guidelines

Use visuals to supplement your writing, not to substitute for it. Always consider how a visual supports your purpose and how your audience might respond to it.

A student writing about electronic surveillance in the workplace, for example, used a cartoon in her MLA paper to illustrate her point about employees’ personal use of the Internet at work.
Another student, writing about treatments for childhood obesity, created a table to display data she had found in two different sources and discussed in her APA paper.

As you draft and revise a document, choose carefully the visuals that support your main point. Avoid overloading your text with too many images, and avoid cheesy clip art.