Graphicacy is the ability to understand and present information through sketches, photographs, diagrams, maps, plans, charts, graphs, and other non-textual visual formats. It is treated as a distinct communication skill alongside literacy and numeracy, covering both the competence to interpret visual information produced by others and the competence to create clear visual information of one's own. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Facts
Core ClaimGraphicacy is the ability to understand and present information in sketches, photographs, diagrams, maps, plans, charts, graphs and other non-textual formats. 1 FAQs
Why was the word graphicacy chosen, and how does reading a graphic differ from reading text?
It echoes literacy and numeracy, and graphics lack the fixed structural conventions that text has.
The word graphicacy was chosen by analogy with literacy, numeracy and articulacy. Interpreting a graphic is loosely analogous to reading text, and producing a graphic is the counterpart of writing it, but the two rest on very different symbol systems. Text follows formal organizing rules whatever its content, while the content of a graphic determines how its parts are arranged.
Is graphicacy an innate skill or a learned one?
It is thought to be largely learned, and depends on background knowledge.
It is thought that graphicacy skills are largely learned rather than innate. A viewer's capacity to interpret a particular type of graphic is related to background knowledge, in particular knowledge of the specific graphic system used and knowledge of the subject matter the graphic depicts.
Sources
1. Graphicacy (Wikipedia)
Origin
coined in 1965 by geographers William Balchin and Alice Coleman
Lead, sentence 1
the ability to understand and present information in the form of sketches, photographs, diagrams, maps, plans, charts, graphs and other non-textual formats
Lead paragraph, education-level
Graphicacy is defined as the ability to understand and present information in the form of sketches, photographs, diagrams, maps, plans, charts, graphs and other non-textual formats.
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