Tips for Writing Effective Figure Legends

Category: Education

Figures, including diagrams, graphs, drawings, maps, photos, and schematics, are said to be pictorial presentations of results. Graphs are the most commonly used figure. If you expect your audience to look at your article, then you must spend considerable time in drafting an attractive title and abstract. If you expect the audience to continue reading and get involved with the scientific content of your article, then you must design distinct figures and write effective figure legends. However, this is not an easy task. Many a times, readers look at figures and figure legends to decide whether they should read the paper. Therefore, the key information must be conveyed through the figures and described clearly in the figure legends. Therefore, figures are influential in conveying your findings, yet they may be unreadable without effective figure legends. Although the protocol for writing figure legends varies among journals, some common principles exists that may ensure clarity in them. Generally, the content of a figure legend should allow your reader to understand and interpret the findings presented in a figure without reading through the main text. Because of this requirement, the figure legends are supposed to be independent from the remaining text. The legend structure possibly resembles that of a pared-down paper, which includes a title and short explanation of the methods and results. To be more specific, an effective figure legend comprises four major components: Title: A concise title that describes the entire figure is necessary. The title may be descriptive or declarative. The descriptive title states the type of experiment(s), whereas a declarative title asserts the overall finding. Materials and methods: A short description of the methods used in the study that may include the type of cell or animal models; treatment conditions; control(s); and laboratory and statistical tests. You may include the information that is absolutely critical to understand the figures and figure legends without referring to the main text. Results: A short explanation of the results represented by the particular figure should be included. This content may vary from one research paper to another as well as among various journals. Moreover, if the figure comprises a declarative title, further description of the results may be redundant in the main text of the legend. In addition, the sample size and p-values must be included, whenever applicable. Definitions: Define all patterns, symbols, lines, scale bars, non-standard abbreviations, colors, and error bars (standard error and standard deviation) in the figure itself. You can exclude the definitions that are already defined in the actual figure. In summary, figure legends should be concise yet comprehensive. Note: The legend typically appears directly after the title.