TABLES AND FIGURES

Prof Jorrit GerritsenBeatrix Children’s Hospital

University Medical Center Groningen

General rules• Abbreviation of the word “Figure” is “Fig.”• “Table” is not abbreviated• Figures and Tables are numbered independently i.e.

in same manuscript Table 1, 2, 3, etc. next to Fig. 1, 2, 3, etc.

• When figures are strongly related they can be numbered with Fig. 1a, 1b, etc.

• Tables and Figures are in the manuscript presented on separate pages from text material at the end of the references.

• Some prefer to present the tables and figures in the Results section to make clear its position.

General rule tables• Legends (sometimes called the caption) goes above

the Table• Units are specified in column headings wherever

appropriate• Lines of demarcation are used to set legend, headers,

data and footnotes apart from one another• Footnotes are used to clarify points in the table, or to

convey repetitive information about entries• Footnotes may also be used to denote statistical

differences among groups for example: *p<0.01; #p<0.001, etc.

Anatomy of a tableTable legend

Column titles

Table body(data)

Footnotes

Flow-volume curve

Figure 1 Sailesh KotechaSpirometric lung function in school-age children. Effect of

Intrautering growth retardation and catch-up growth. AJRCCM

Figures• The most common Figure types are: – Bar graph– Frequency histogram– XY scatterplot– XY line graph– Pie

histogram

simple bar without SD

mean and confidence limits

bar with SD

Regression with SD

Kaplan-Meier plot

plot individual data

scatter

regression

scatter

EM picture

gene 1

gene 2

gene 3

general considerations on figures• big or little? a good rule is to size the fig to rill

about one half of a page• color or no color? black and white is

preferred.• title or no title? never use a title for Figures

included in a paper.• offset axes or not? elect to offset the axes

only when data points will be obscured • error bars or not? always include error bars

(SD or SEM) when plotting means

conclusions• tables and Figures are important in telling the

story in your manuscript• make the tables and Figures as simple as

possible• limit the number of tables, they are mostly

difficult to read and more importantly boring • Look careful at the dimensions of the y-axis of

your plot• give a presentation of your tables and figures

to other scientists and reward their suggestions