How do I accentuate the zero line on my chart?

Highlight the zero line to help the reader distinguish between positive and negative values.

Go from this:

To this:

To highlight the zero line in a chart:

  • Go to Customize > Basic > Annotations

  • Under Lines click +

  • The plot area is highlighted. Click anywhere to start your line.

  • Click and drag the white circle with a black outline to set the length of your line

  • Drag the line to the 0 line

  • Under Size select a value, e.g. 2 or 3, to set the line width

To highlight the zero line in a chart:

If your line is the full length of your chart, you can also use a plot line instead of an annotation.

  • Go to Customize > Advanced > Y axis
  • On Plot Lines, click +
  • Under Plot Lines 1 you can change the color, dash style, value, line width and z Index

1 Like

Hi Kerry! Nice to see you on here, finally!

I definitely prefer this solution, as it allows one to be absolutely sure about the plot line covering exactly the value one desires (in this case x=0)

The Z index is of course important, because artifacts like the grid line showing here in white:

And we might want to make that Z index a default behavior. But I can’t say for sure before we get to investigating if there are any trade-offs.

1 Like

to follow up on this, is it possible to have my tick marks on my zero (0) line?

hopefully the screenshot provides further explanation

image

Hi,

I am not aware of any way of doing this. It might be possible by defining an extra axis and using that as your would-be plot line.

On the other hand, you can add gridlines to the horizontal axis, although your lines will cover the entire vertical span at that point:

You can set this by going to X Axis [1], and adjusting the “Grid line width”.

You could try changing the Top position of your x-axis to a percentage (if you use a number instead of a percentage it seems to change positions when responsive).

Then, if you want your labels to stay at the bottom, you could change the Y position of those.