What Language to Use to Describe Trends Presented in Graphs

You may ask yourself why you should bother . Well, the ability to interpret graphs and convey the information contained in them orally can be very helpful to people in business. Graphs provide visual aids for oral presentations to be used in conferences, sales meetings, board meetings, and managerial meetings. They help keep the listeners interested and involved, and provide a different means - a visual one - of conveying information that might otherwise be too difficult for the listener to conceptualise.

Here are some of the most common expressions used to describe trends.

To indicate upward movement: to climb, to rise, to go up, to increase, to pick up, to reach a peak, to jump;

Downward movement: to go down, to fall, to decrease, to drop, to decline, to hit a low;

Stability: to level out/off, to even out, to bottom out;

Sates of change: dramatic, sharp, rapid, sudden, fast; gradual, steady, slow; size of change: fractionally, marginally lower/higher; slightly, a little, somewhat lower/higher; considerably, substantially, noticeably, significantly higher/lower; a great deal, far, much, dramatically lower/higher.

Use of prepositions: Figures rose by 3 percent. There was a rise of 6 percent.