Ekky

And the above was literally how I was thought to represent data in university. Maximize the areas of interest, make sure to properly label your axes (lest they become misleading), and remember to trim empty space where relevant.

But it appears that proper graphs for science and engineering reports may not be used for representing data to the common man, as it must be assumed that, even for the most simple of graphs, the common man will only look at the funny line, but not the graph itself.

I was of the impression that reading a graph also required understanding of regular writing/reading, but I’m no native speaker, so I’ll gladly stand corrected.

I’m not sure what you mean by “one of those little zigzag indicators”, do you perhaps mean leap/break in data denoted by the “Squiggle”? I don’t think any data below 7m is included in this graph, so, if I understand you correctly, then that wouldn’t be a proper use of said squiggle.

Seems fine to me, the axes are easy to understand and there would be a lot of unnecessary whitespace otherwise. Though, it does require some reading comprehension, and that one actually looks at it and not just skims over.