If the plotting symbol is blank, a collision state cannot occur. See Collision States for more information. 15-214 a label character does not appear in the plot. By default, the penalty for not printing the first character is greater than the penalty for not printing the second character, and so on. By default, the penalty for not printing the fifth and subsequent characters is the same.
Labels can share characters without penalty.
Because PROC PLOT considers penalties when it places labels, changing the default penalties can change the placement of the labels. This example extends the penalty list. The twentieth penalty of 2 is the penalty for not printing the sixth through 200th character. You can also extend the penalty list by just specifying the starting index. PROC PLOT usually avoids using collision states because of the large default penalty of 500 that is associated with them.