The following principles are recommended (see example below):
- Number figures consecutively within the document (eg Figure 1, Figure 2, Figure 3), or by section or chapter (eg Figure 2.1, Figure 2.2, Figure 4.1, Figure B5). Numbering by section is useful because changes in one section will not affect figure numbering in another section. This is especially important in long documents or those that have many figures.
- Place the figure title as its own paragraph below the graph, not within the graph.
- Use a title that describes the figure content, including where the data were collected and the period that the data cover, if appropriate:
Figure 3 Greenhouse gas emissions, Melbourne, 2009–13
- Use minimal capitalisation (only capitalise the first letter of the first word of the title and proper nouns).
- Use minimal punctuation to keep titles clean and uncluttered: follow figure numbers with a tab, not a colon, and do not place a full stop at the end. Using a tab also helps align the titles properly in an automatically generated contents list of figures:
Figure 1.1 Laboratory test results, July 2012 – June 2013
not
Figure 1.1: Laboratory test results, July 2012 – June 2013.
- Spell out abbreviations in full in the title, wherever possible. Put any necessary detail in explanatory figure notes. The title should not cover more than 2 lines (preferably 1 line).
- For a series of graphs, give the same information in the same order.
