Table of contents
plottips - tips for creating good plots with <PLOT79>
The American Institute of Physics Style Manual makes the
following recommendations:
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1)
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For single-column reproduction, figures will be reduced
to about 7.5 cm in width. After reduction, symbols and
letters should be no smaller than 0.15 cm in height,
corresponding to a fractional height of 0.02 on the unit
square. Labels and numbers should be drawn in
characters of the same size, using a simple font which
will tolerate reduction without the loss of serifs.
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2)
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Tick marks should be placed at each number, and be
inside the graph. They should be about 3/4 the size of
the lettering, or about 0.015 on the unit square.
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3)
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Dense gridding should be avoided, and grid lines should
only be used if they are essential for measurement of
data from the graph. Grid lines should extend only from
numbered ticks.
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4)
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Graphs should be enclosed with 4 lines, each with ticks.
Only the left vertical and bottom horizontal axes should
be labelled, unless two different vertical or horizontal
scales are to be illustrated.
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5)
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Labelling should be from left-to-right on the horizontal
axes, and from bottom-to-top on the vertical axes.
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6)
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Powers of ten should be avoided in favor of Systeme
Internationale prefixes where possible. Thus, write
"nanometers" instead of "meters (x 10**-9)". If a power
of ten is required, it should be placed with the last
number on the axis to avoid ambiguity. Does "meters (x
10)" mean that the numbers represent dekameters or
centimeters?
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7)
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Numbers with 5 or more digits on either side of the
decimal point are written with spaces separating groups
of three digits to avoid conflict with European reversed
usage of periods and commas. Numbers with 4 or fewer
digits on either side of the decimal point are written
without spaces. Examples are "12 000", "6 427 000",
"24.077 094 3", "1200", "4620.010", and "24.0032".
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8)
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Scales should be chosen carefully to avoid excessively
large blank areas on the graph.
document (1L), drawit(1L), grapht(1L), graph3t(1L), lptops(1L), pfort(1L),
piechtt(1L), plot79-intro(1L), plot79(1L), pluto(1L), pretty(1L), rdinfo(1L),
sf3(1L), slides(1L), tekalw(1L), tkvecs(1L), world(1L)
Nelson H. F. Beebe, Ph.D.
Center for Scientific Computing
South Physics Building
University of Utah
Salt Lake City, UT 84112
Tel: (801) 581-5254
(Manual page by R. P. C. Rodgers, Computer Applications in Laboratory
Medicine Project, UCSF, San Francisco, CA 94143).