What you’ll learn to do: Discuss how to most effectively use charts, diagrams, and other graphics in business messages and identify potential sources for these visual aids

When you communicate data, you can’t just throw a whole bunch of numbers on a page and expect that readers will understand what you want to say. Charts, tables, and graphs help communicators organize that data in a way that helps their audiences understand the story the data tells and, hopefully, interpret it correctly.

In this section, we’ll discuss the types of charts, graphs, and diagrams available to help you show off your data in ways that make it accessible to your audience. We’ll look at specific communication challenges and determine which kind of chart or graph best illustrates your message, and finally, we’ll discuss how to format your chart so that your story is easily and quickly understood.