Bella consults

The Wall Street Journal (2008–10–23) does it right. Nothing chopped off. The Royal Bank of Scotland in free fall. Nearly 14 %. You see it. The disaster as long as the column wide.

In the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ, 2008–10–23) 29 out of 50 bars for the Stoxx index end trembling in haze.

The reason: To spare nervous investors a lot of stress the SZ cuts everything above 5 %. Consequently, the 15.25 % lost by Repsol, too. Soothing. But nonsense.

Dear SZ, now that you are using beautiful graphical tables, why don’t you use them correctly?

Intention of a data graph: review values. Register differences. Identify patterns. With this here only reviewing values is possible. You don’t see differences. You don’t see patterns.

Source: Welt am Sonntag, No. 36, 2008–09–07, p.39

I have to calculate differences myself: all (”gesamt”) minus each value. 42 times.
And transpose all. Because the types belong into columns.
Patterns are best identified with graphs. Therefore: bars.

Reading newspapers can be exhausting.