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Readers learn through experience how to understand different kinds of graphic conventions, just as they learn how to understand punctuation conventions. For example, percentages in a pie chart add up to 100. Boxes in a flowchart represent actions or processes. An organizational chart is read from the top down. When you meet the reader's format expectations, you increase the likelihood that the reader will understand your point.
A graphic should meet the reader's format expectations. The first Gantt chart below might confuse readers because it shows different time scales for the activities of a home-landscape project. For example, removing debris appears to require twice as much time as installing the pond, even though each task is projected to take one month. Through experience, readers expect to see a single scale for time represented in a Gantt chart. The second example corrects this flaw.
Poorly Formatted
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Revised
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