Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Economics/Style guide

Numbering graphs/diagrams/figures, images, tables, etc.

If one of the project's goals is to promote a uniform appearance across different articles, then for ease of reference, we'll probably need a standard system for labeling/numbering diagrams, tables, etc., when an article contains more than one of any type. This is a consistent practice in encyclopedias and other reference works, as well as in books, especially textbooks. I've already run into this problem while editing several different articles.

• I checked WP:STYLE but couldn't find any guidance on this point. (Maybe it's there and I overlooked it.) But all the major style manuals, like those WP prescribes for references (MLA, Chicago, etc.), have such labeling systems, and any one of them would do.
• If the article contains only one graph and/or 1 table, then there's little if any potential for ambiguity. (In fact, most of the style manuals I'm familiar with say not to number a graph, etc., when there's only one, because it's redundant.)
• But say an article contains two or more diagrams/graphs/figures. It would improve both clarity and ease of reference to be able to refer to them specifically as Figure 1 (or Fig. 1, depending on what the style manual says!), Table 1, etc., to avoid any possible confusion. Currently, articles tend to use references like "in the figure to the right" or "... above/below." That makes it inconvenient, and possibly ambiguous, to refer to the figure later in the article and especially on the talk page. Phrases like "in the fourth graph above" don't sound very encyclopedic, and they could be confusing to a reader.
  • A graph etc. could be referred to by its title, if it has one, but the titles are likely to be longer and more cumbersome than a simple figure number.
  • Another problem with references like "in the table to the right/above" is that they might become meaningless if a subsequent edit changes the position of the object. --Jackftwist (talk) 21:09, 21 April 2010 (UTC)