How to Prepare Figures and Tables for an Engineering Journal

Figures must be JPG or JPEG at 300 dpi, 75 mm or 155 mm wide, each with a heading, numbered in the order they are cited. Tables go after the references, numbered in Arabic numerals with self-descriptive headings, built with Word’s table tools and using horizontal lines only. The same data must not appear in both a table and a figure.

Figures are the most common production delay in engineering journal papers, and almost always for the same reason: they were made for a screen and are being asked to print.

The specification

	Figures	Tables
Format	JPG / JPEG in the Word file	Word table tools
Size	75 mm or 155 mm wide	Full width as needed
Resolution	300 dpi	—
Numbering	Arabic, in citation order	Arabic, in citation order
Heading	Fig 1: … (9 pt Times New Roman, bold)	Table 1: … (9 pt Times New Roman, bold)
Placement	In the text	After the references
Legends	All on a separate page	With the table

Why 300 dpi matters, and why your figure is not

Screens display around 72 to 96 dots per inch. Print needs 300. A figure that was captured from a screen has 72 dpi of actual information, and no amount of enlarging or resaving adds any — it just makes the existing pixels bigger.

If you made the plot in software, export it from that software at 155 mm and 300 dpi. Do not screenshot it, do not copy it out of a slide, and do not export from a PDF viewer.

The check takes ten seconds: right-click the image file, look at its properties, and divide the pixel width by the intended print width in inches. A 155 mm figure is about 6.1 inches, so 300 dpi means roughly 1,830 pixels wide. Anything much below that will not print.

Making a figure readable at 75 mm

This is the engineering journal figure failure nobody catches on screen. A plot designed on a 27-inch monitor and then shrunk to 75 mm loses its axis labels entirely.

Set the figure to its final size before styling it. Design at 75 mm, not at screen size.
Increase font sizes until labels are readable at final size. They will look oversized on your monitor. That is correct.
Thicken lines and enlarge markers. Hairlines disappear in print.
Remove chart junk. Gridlines, borders, backgrounds and 3-D effects cost clarity at small size.
Do not rely on colour alone. Print may be greyscale, and readers may be colour-blind. Use different line styles or markers as well.

Then print the page on ordinary paper at actual size and look at it. Two minutes, and it catches everything an on-screen check misses.

Table rules that are easy to miss

Horizontal lines only. No vertical rules.
Built with the table tools, not aligned with spaces or tabs — which collapse the moment the file is reformatted.
Placed after the references, not inline where they appear in the argument.
Every abbreviation or symbol explained in the legend, even ones defined in the text.
Units in the column heading, not repeated in every cell.

Numbering and citation order

Every engineering journal requires figures and tables to be cited in the text in numerical order. Table 2 cannot be mentioned before Table 1. This sounds trivial until a paper is restructured during revision and the order silently breaks — it is worth re-checking after any significant rewrite.

Multi-part figures are marked with upper-case letters, A, B, C, in bold Times New Roman, and the labelling should be consistent across every figure in the paper.

Units and symbols in figures and tables

The same conventions apply here as in the text, and they are checked:

SI units throughout.
A space between number and symbol — 10 mg, not 10mg. Exception: the degree symbol for angles.
No plural on symbols and no full stop — kg, not kgs or kg.
A zero before a decimal point — 0.01, not .01.
Negative indices where the instructions call for them — m^-1, h^-1.
The multiplication sign ×, not the letter x.
En dash for ranges — 10–25, not 10-25.

Axis labels are where these are broken most often, because the plotting software wrote them and nobody re-read them. Check every axis label against this list once.

Four figures that get sent back

The screenshot

Captured from a screen, 72 dpi, often with a window border or a cursor still visible. Cannot be fixed by resaving — it has to be re-exported from the original software.

The figure with unreadable axes

Designed at screen size, shrunk to 75 mm. The data is perfect and the labels are 4 pt. Fix by setting the figure size first and enlarging fonts until they are readable at final size.

The colour-only figure

Five lines distinguished by colour alone. In greyscale print they become five identical grey lines, and around one in twelve male readers cannot separate some of them on screen either. Add line styles or markers.

The table pretending to be a figure

An image of a table, pasted as a picture. It cannot be copy-edited, cannot be searched, and prints at whatever resolution the screenshot had. Rebuild it with the table tools.

A five-minute check before you submit

Open each figure file and check pixel width. 155 mm at 300 dpi is about 1,830 px; 75 mm is about 885 px.
Print the manuscript at actual size and read every axis label and legend.
Photocopy or print one page in greyscale and check the lines are still distinguishable.
Check citation order — Figure 1 mentioned before Figure 2, Table 1 before Table 2.
Confirm no data appears twice, once as a table and once as a graph.
Check every figure has a heading and every table a legend, and that figure legends are on their own page.

Five minutes, and it removes the commonest cause of production delay after acceptance. The full specification is on the Instructions to Author page, and our pre-submission checklist covers the rest of the manuscript.

Choosing between a table and a figure

Use a	When	Because
Sentence	Two or three values	Faster to read than any table
Table	Exact values matter, or many conditions	Precision and easy comparison
Figure	A trend, shape or relationship	The eye reads a curve faster than a column
Both	Never	Explicitly not allowed here

The last row is a rule at this engineering journal. Presenting the same data twice wastes space and makes both versions harder to read.

Keep the source files

Long after the paper is published you will want a figure for a talk, a thesis chapter or a follow-up paper. If the only copy is the JPG that went into the manuscript, you are re-plotting from scratch.

Keep the plotting script or source file, the data behind it, and the export settings, in the same folder as the manuscript. It costs nothing today and saves an afternoon later — and if a reviewer asks for a figure to be re-drawn at a different scale, you can do it in minutes rather than reconstructing the plot.

Frequently asked questions

What resolution do figures need?

300 dpi, at a width of either 75 mm or 155 mm. A figure that looks correct on screen is usually 72 dpi and cannot be printed at this quality.

What format should figures be in?

JPG or JPEG, placed in the Word file. Each figure needs a heading, and legends for all figures go on a separate page.

Where do tables go in the manuscript?

After the references. Each is numbered in Arabic numerals with a self-descriptive heading or legend, built with Word's table tools rather than with spaces or tabs.

Can I show the same data in a table and a graph?

No. The instructions specifically say the same data should not be presented in both. Choose whichever form carries the point.

How should multi-part figures be labelled?

With upper-case letters — A, B, C — in bold Times New Roman, consistent across all figures in the paper.

Why do my figures look fine on screen but get rejected?

Because screen resolution and print resolution are different things. A screenshot is typically 72 dpi; enlarging it does not add information. Export from the software that made the plot, at the required width and 300 dpi.

Related Guides

How figures and tables sit with the surrounding sections:

Created by Sofia Marchetti • 08 Aug 2026