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

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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.

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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

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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.

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thank you @KerryHolm I’ll give that a go :grinning:

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struggling with offsetting the y position of my labels. I’ve tried to toggle “reserve space” and this sometimes addresses the issue, but a short-term fix is to manually set the height of my embed frame to include the labels

Hi Chris,

The labels moved with the x-axis when I tried @KerryHolm’s suggestion to change the top position of the x-axis , as shown here:

Seems like your xaxis line moved but the labels remained in the original position.

Hi Kerry,

Tried to create this but got stuck.

Should I add a line annotation first, then work in the advanced menu?

Thanks in advance!

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Hey Mark,

That’s how I’ve done it in the past.

Added the annotation line in basic, then edit in the Advanced menu.

Hi Mark,

I am able to do it by following the steps that I mentioned above. I like doing this this way because you don’t have to use the annotations to make it work.

What isn’t working for you?

I figured it out, thanks :slight_smile:

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