Best Practice Guide

The ultimate step-by-step guide for analytic content creators.

Chart titles best practices

  • Chart titles and captions make visualizations far easier to comprehend. Use titles whenever possible. Titles can combine both a main title and a subtitle to provide additional information about the chart.

  • Use appropriate font and style

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  • Summarize the chart in plain english

    Use simple language, free of acronyms to clearly explain what the subject of the chart is. Keep the title short and precise and avoid using articles like a, an, the as well as adjectives like great, amazing etc

     

    <C100 insert image – chart long weird title, simple short title>

  • Include the metric units

    You should include the unit of measure in the title or subtitle. For example Sales by Region ($ in millions). Often the unit is mentioned in a smaller font in the axis title. Mentioning it in the chart title gives the unit more visual prominence.

    <C101 insert image – chart title no $, title with $ >

  • Include the time period

    When a chart shows data for a set period of time, such as Year to Date include that in your title or subtitle. 

    <C102 insert image – chart subtitle no date, subtitle with YTD >

  • Use Dynamic Titles

    Where the data or the date period can change in your chart based on user interactions, such as filtering or drill down, consider using dynamic titles to highlight the details of the chart. For example use a dynamic filter to highlight that the subject of the chart is a particular store – based on the filter values.

    <C103 insert image – chart with no store in title by highlighted, chart with store name in title>