Communication is not limited to the use of words and text but also extends to the use of pictures, punctuation, spacing, and the medium of our message. The article "Images as the Text: Pictographs and Pictographic Logic" by Drucker and McGann states that "A true pictograph functions as an image whose meaning is communicated through its visual form as a picture of something, whether the communication is effected through substitution or translation into language or not". The article mentions clay sign-tokens used by ancient Sumer and their effective development of a system to record simple business transactions. Much like our present graphs they used pictures and a numerical notation to display how much of a certain product was at hand. Although the present graphs have become much more complex and colorful the concept used in ancient Sumer remains the same. The purpose of a graph is to display information visually allowing people to make decisions easier and in less time.
An example of the effectiveness of a graph to display information can be shown through the following graph. We can determine that the strawberry is the favorite fruit of this specific population. Although there are no words to directly tell us so, the pictures and numbers allow us to make the connection.
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