Briefle words · Data & charts
Zero baseline
Starting a bar chart's value axis at zero so bar lengths are proportional to the values.
Say it to an AI
Support card with this week's ticket count, the change vs last week, and a bar chart of the last five weeks. The bars need a zero baseline with light gridlines and three tick labels, never a truncated axis. Highlight the current week in a darker shade.
How an expert would brief the stronger version of “Support tickets chart”.
See it
Try it as a puzzle →Weekly volume card on the team dashboard of a customer-support inbox tool.
Why: A's axis runs 0 to 250 tickets; B's runs 200 to 240, so its bars show only the top slice of each week.
More ways experts use it
Two small bar charts side by side, email and chat tickets per week for the last five weeks, each with its total in the panel heading. They must use a shared axis (common scale) from 0 to 160 with the same tick labels and a zero baseline so the channels can be compared by eye.
Tickets by channel panels · Data & chartsWeekly checkout conversion for 12 weeks as a single line with a takeaway title about the Aug 17 recovery. Use a non-zero baseline (line charts): run the axis from 2.0% to 2.7% with ticks every 0.2 and clear tick labels so the range is explicit, and label the last value at the line end.
Conversion trend line · Data & charts
Related words
Room 1 · Essentials
Learn “Zero baseline” in a five-minute lesson