He recommends considering the purpose of the document, reader familiarity, and the placement of graphs based on visual cues. Due to increased technology and improved software programs, it is easier for writers to create graphics to accommodate text. With this increased technology comes the increased responsibility of the writer to create graphics that are not distorted. The distortion of graphs can be attributed to two factors, intentional or unintentional distortion. Intentional distortion occurs when the writer wishes to either exaggerate positive data or mask negative data.
Unintentional distortion occurs when the writer lacks knowledge about graphs.
This is common with software programs because many have built-in graphs that are already distorted. There are many types of distortion that are common to graphs. The main types of distortion are suppressing the zero, manipulating the ratio, and third dimension. All of these rely on the laziness of the reader. There are several methods to eliminate distortion within graphs.