The graphics in your final project are the figures, which organize information into graphs, charts, plots, diagrams and illustrations, and the tables, which organize information into columns and rows.

When you display figures, the clearest way to refer to them is to make them the subject of the sentence.



Although the first and second constructions in the first box above are not wrong, and in this case are not even particularly problematic, as a general rule the simplest, clearest and most advisable construction is the sentence in the second box.

Directly below the figure you should include a legend, and you can simply recycle the same wording; in this case, for example, we only need to remove the word shows.



In the case of tables, include the legend directly before the graphic, not after it.

To ensure that the reader understands the main sequence of events, i.e., the key stages in your process, you may want to include a flow diagram in your methods section. Flow diagrams include a relatively minimal amount of text; a label for each stage in the process should probably suffice. Give more detailed explanations in adjacent paragraphs. However, do not make the labels so brief that someone unfamiliar with the project will find it hard to understand them.

The same advice applies for the headings in tables: it is better for the column headers to be long than it is for them to be unintelligible.