The same study notes that the orientation of vertical text made no difference: Vertical Text: Bottom-up or Top-down (options 3 & 4) Marquee found that marquee text is slower to read than either vertical orientation (and all three are slower to read than normal horizontal text):Īn experiment was conducted to investigate, and found that marquee text is indeed read more slowly than rotated text, and that rotated text is read more slowly than standard horizontal textĬonclusion: stacked text should be kept for 'special occasions' such as Hotel signs. For example, the study Reading Vertical Text: Rotated vs. Every reference I've seen say it is the hardest to read. The easiest to dismiss is the last: stacked or marquee text. Rejecting Stacked / Marquee Text (option 5) Note: although the question talks of labelling a bar-chart, similar arguments will apply to labelling a table (e.g. So, which one (if any) is 'best', and what affects that decision? Letters are in their 'normal' orientation, but one atop the next (also known as marquee text). Slanted, bottom-left to top-right (as in the question).The OptionsĪssuming you keep the basic orientation of the chart the same, then there are five ways of arranging the labels: Note: these 'rules' mean the 'preferred' direction of slant (for a given use-case) is reversed if the labels are above the data (typically, a chart is labelled at the bottom a table is labelled at the top). The OP's chart is an example of the first option (the labels lead to the corresponding bars).

If going from chart/table to label, you want the start of the text next to the corresponding column in the chart/table. If going from label to chart/table, you want the end of the text next to the corresponding column in the chart/table. What matters is whether 'expected use' of the chart (or table) goes from the label to the chart/table or vice versa: Reading comprehension is probably not the key factor.

Excel graph axis label text