Including tables and figures in academic writing

Tables and figures can help make dense information available to your reader in an accessible way. They can be particularly useful for presenting detailed information of a statistical nature. Tables and figures can be especially helpful when discussing the results of a data analysis.

We use the terms ‘table’ and ‘figure’ to refer to different types of graphic presentation.

A table has vertical columns and horizontal rows with headings for each.

A figure refers to all other graphic illustrations, such as graphs, maps, pie charts, diagrams and photographs.

Tables and figures should complement information in the text although both the graphic and the text should also make sense alone.

Tables and figures are often best placed immediately after discussion that relates directly to them in the text. The academic writer should make an explicit reference to the figure or table in the relevant part of the text (e.g. Figure 1 illustrates how...) and should pick out important information and highlight any connections of significance. By looking at the table or figure, the reader should be able to gain a more detailed understanding of the points being made in the text.

Every table and figure should have a title and a number. If they are being used in an extended piece of academic writing such as a dissertation it is helpful to use a sequence of numbers for each chapter, e.g. Table 1.1, Table 1.2 (in Chapter 1); Table 2.1, Table 2.2 (in Chapter 2) etc.

Figures and tables usually have a different sequence of numbers, e.g. Figure 1, Figure 2, Table 1, Table 2. The title of each should be concise and include all the key words which clearly indicate the content of the figure or table.

The title for a table appears above it in the text whereas the title for a figure appears below it.

1. The ways in which these different titles were spread across faculties is given below in Table 2.6.

2. In the extract, the thesis writer draws attention to the first line of the table in which the most general statistics for all faculties are presented. She also makes a reference to a statistic in the third row of the table because it represents a significantly high number of theses in the Engineering department which had a chapter entitled 'literature review'.

3. In the extract, the writer mentions some specific examples of titles and gives some additional information about the structuring of texts which is not in the form of statistical information that would go into a table.

1. Phrases used in the extract to refer to the table: 'As shown in table 2...' 'Tables 3 and 4 give...'

2. The present tense is used to refer to tables and figures in a text.

Note: the present tense is normally used when referring to something which appears in the text

Here is a possible answer:

Figure one shows that obvious dental decay in eight, 12 and 15 year olds' permanent teeth has decreased since 1983, to its lowest recorded level. The 2003 Children's Dental Health Survey found particularly strong improvement amongst the 12 and 15 year olds, with the proportion having obvious decay falling by approximately 40%.

Some alternative word choices are also possible:

shows - reveals

decreased - fallen - declined

falling - dropping

Here is a possible answer:

As illustrated in Figure 2, the number of UK households having internet access steadily increased between 1998 and 2004. In 2004, 52 per cent of households in the UK (12.8 million) could access the Internet from home, compared with just 9 per cent (2.2 million) in 1998.

Some alternative word choices are also possible:

steadily - gradually

increased - rose

compared with - in comparison with

Two possible titles are:

UK Households with home access to the Internet, 1998 - 2004

Individuals accessing the Internet - National Statistics Omnibus Survey