Name the bar graph. The general title of the bar graph should provide an overview of the information it contains and give the readers an indication of the data they will be looking at. For example, for a bar graph that will help a school determine freshman enrollment trends with regard to introductory foreign language courses, a good title for the bar graph might be “Freshman Enrollment in Introductory Foreign Language Courses.”

Name the vertical axis, which is the y axis. The vertical axis describes quantity using a frequency scale of number units. In the case of the enrollment bar graph, this would be the number of students in the freshman class, described in number units. A good title for the vertical axis would be “Freshman Enrollment.” If the total number of freshman students were 200, a number unit to consider using would be 50.

Name the horizontal axis, which is the x axis. The horizontal axis describes grouped data. In the case of the enrollment bar graph, this would be the introductory courses, such as Spanish, French or Latin. A good name for the horizontal axis would be “Introductory Foreign Language Courses.”