A working reference for picking a chart form. Most chart-type catalogs sort by what a chart looks like; this one sorts by the question your reader is asking — what moves? how does it split? what's the order? — and lands on the form that answers it.
Each pattern carries the same anatomy: a one-line capsule, a live demo you can poke at, when to reach for it and when not, the cosmetic mistakes that even good readers fall into, and pointers to the forms you should reach for instead. The forms that disagree on the same data are the ones doing the most teaching — the compare page lines those up explicitly.
Aimed at writers, journalists, and anyone making the call between two charts that could each "work." Browse below by purpose family, jump from the decide-by-question ladder, or skim the full roster as thumbnails.