134 11 Before You Submit
- Do you draw attention to important points in the caption?
- Is there a reference to the figure in the text before the figure itself?
- Have you acknowledged the source or the information on which it is based?
- Have you identified examples of ‘good’ figures in other people’s work, and ap-
plied the lessons to your own work?
Graphs (or Charts)
- Does it have both axes clearly labelled?
- Is the text legible?
- Are lines and other features appropriately labelled?
- Have you sought out and followed guidelines on design and preparation of visual
materials?
Tables
- Have you arranged it in some way that makes it more than a collection of data?
Would the reader see patterns or trends? (There is no justification for having
tables otherwise). - Is it vertically and horizontally consistent?
- Are there unnecessary lines?
- Are all rows and columns labelled?
- Have you considered relegating the data contained in it to an appendix, and plot-
ting the main trends as a graph?
Notes and References
If you have used the numbered notes system of references, and you have used your
word processor to automatically number or renumber notes, you should not have to
check that the note numbers correspond to the reference numbers in the text—this
should have been done for you. It will enable you to collect your notes at the foot
of each page or at the end of each chapter or at the end of the main body of text
(but collected separately for each chapter), before your ‘References’. Give your
list a heading ‘Notes’, as a section-style heading if at the end of each chapter, or a
chapter-style heading if at the end of the text.
However, there is still some checking to do:
- Re-read the notes to make sure that you have not deleted any accidentally, and
that you wish to keep the ones you have. - Check whether you need to revise any of them in the light of revisions to the text.