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Format graph

Command:Format
Next selectGraph
Button:Button

Description

Click the Format graph button button in the Formatting toolbar to define the general format of the graph. The effects of the changes in the left panels (displayed below) of the dialog box can be previewed in the right side panel:

Format graph

Graph color scheme box

Graph color scheme dialog box

Graph options box

Graph titles

In this box you can edit the main text sections (titles and two axes) of the graph.

Graph titles

Toolbar

The toolbar contains buttons to apply Bold, Italic, Underline, Subscript and Superscript text styles.

Click the symbol button Insert symbol to insert a symbol (e.g. characters from the Greek alphabet) in the text.

Insert symbol dialog box

Click the desired symbol.

Graph axes

In this dialog box you can define the scaling of the X and/or Y-axis by entering the following information.

Graph axes

In MedCalc, the default increments are 1, 2 or 5 times a power of ten, yielding about 6 to 10 major tickmarks. If you are preparing a graph for publication, you are advised (Tukey, 1977) to limit the number of major tickmarks to about 2 or 3, so you will have to increase the value for increment, preferably also steps of 1, 2 or 5 times a power of 10.

If a logarithmic transformation of the data was selected in the graph's dialog box, then the information for the lowest value (Minimum) and Increment must be logarithmic values as well (e.g. for Minimum enter -2 for the value 0.01, or 0 for the value 1, 3 for the value 1000, etc.). Increment is then the exponent increment and should preferentially remain equal to 1.

Scale reversal: if you want to reverse the scale of the axis, you enter the higher value in the Minimum field and the lower value in the Maximum field. Scale reversal is possible for both X- and Y-axis in most MedCalc graphs.

When you click OK the graph will be replotted using the new axis scaling. However, the program will ignore a new axis scaling if this new scaling would cause data to fall outside the full axis range.

Font

In this box you can select the font, font style and font size used in the graph. The font Sample box (in which you can enter text freely) ignores the selected font size. The effect of font size can be seen in the Preview box.

Graph font

 

Format graph components

To format different graph components, right-click on the component and click Format... on the context menu.

Example

In a box-and-whisker plot, right-click on a marker.

Format marker - step 1

Click Format marker...

Select the desired marker attributes in the dialog box.

Format marker - dialog box

See also