There are currently many composition textbooks which show students how to integrate visuals into their text, including how to construct their own graphs. The following is a compilation of advice from a few of these.

When do you use visuals?
1. Make the information readable—map out relationships between main ideas and supporting details.
2. Clarify complex ideas—“show” what you are also “telling” in your written text.
3. Focus your analysis—draw the reader’s attention to your written observation and dramatize your point.
4. Condense information—since visuals can “say” more, more quickly than words—if the visual is easy to “read”!
5. Visuals add energy to your writing.

Visuals can support your main point, illustrate your topic, and clarify your information. Do not use visuals as a decoration; use them to make or elaborate a point. Using diagrams and illustrations can make a spatial concept clear. Using comparative graphs and charts can illustrate trends in data and provide comparisons of amounts and values.

In the chart below, professor Richard Hay summarizes the use of the chat room by his first year writing students. It is a quick visual as compared to his explanation. However, the text (quoted below) compliments the visual—the information is complimentary because he elaborates on the situation after giving us the trend:

As the chart shows, I was doing substantially more (virtual) talking than my students in the first few chat sessions--87 more comments in the first session, 145 more in the second, and 110 more in the third. But during the fourth chat session, that despairing difference changed. Students began speaking more than their instructor--from just under 100 more comments in the fifth chat session to 451 more in the final chat session of the semester. In the end, students were talking more than me, and less to me and more to each other. Instead of simply asking a question and then waiting for the perceived omniscient instructor to provide the answer, the students began posing questions and asking for evaluations of their work and then providing the answers and the discussion themselves.

In this very structural graph, we can see the number of student interactions growing impressively and, because of the author’s textual explanation, we can imagine the types of comments that each bar in this graph represents.
(Richard Hay,“Virtual Conversations: The Use of Internet-based Synchronous Chat in Basic Writing,” Currents in Electronic Literacy Fall 2003 (7). 15 Oct 2008. http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/currents/fall03/hay.html.)


PLACING VISUALS EXAMPLE:
Consider the use of the image below and how it is used in conjunction with the text, from: “Violent images inquiry to launch” on the BBC News website, (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/film/2656863.stm). 9 Oct 2007.
Tuesday, 14 January, 2003, 13:37 GMT:

Violent images inquiry to launch

Inquiry reflects recurrent concerns over on-screen violence


The link between street crime and violent films, TV shows, video games and song lyrics is to be examined by a government advisor in the wake of heightened fears that violent imagery has contributed to rising gun crime.
Censorship of the UK entertainment industry will be reviewed by the Youth Justice Board, who will make recommendations for changes to rules, according to the Telegraph newspaper.
A spokeswoman for the Youth Justice Board told BBC News Online their research had shown that cultural factors did influence crime, and that they were planning to look more closely at the subject.
The board's chairman, Lord Warner, criticised some computer games, soap operas and rap artists for coming close to "inciting violence or dangerous sexual behaviour" in an interview with the newspaper.
"There's a case for reviewing whether we should regulate more rigorously," he said.
But the entertainment industry has insisted current rules are adequate, and said Lord Warner the government are not in a position to change them….

How well connected are the image and the story? The image does not clearly connect with youth crime, so why was it chosen? It makes an emotional appeal to the reader and draws the reader into the article, even though the article is not about the movie pictured (which isn’t even cited by name). In this way, the use of the visual is typical for the general press. If you use an image for an academic purpose, then you need to cite the source. You also need to consider if you are too far away from your topic.

Citing a Visual

Underneath the visual, add a numbered “tag” like Figure 1 or Table 1. Then, this visual can be found in your bibliography under this tag. After the tag, write in a heading. Put the complete source information in the bibliography.

Figure 1: Still shot from Halloween (1978).

Bibliography citation: Figure 1. Flixster. 2008. June 5, 2008. http://www.flixster.com/movie/halloween/photos?p=3271435.


Questions to ask as you add a visual:
o What mix of writing and visuals should I use?
o Will the visual support the text or the text support the visual?
o Where will the visual appear? Can I insert it into the text and where? Do I need to reduce the size of an image or
add color?
o Do I need to attach the visual as an “addendum” to the end of my paper? How do I refer to the visual in my writing?
o What impact will the visual have on my reader?