Lesson 5: Using Tables and Graphics
Table of Figures and Table of Tables
Most books provide a Table of Contents to help readers understand what material is covered within the book and to help them quickly go directly to a specific piece of information they need. Many manuals also provide Tables of Figures and Tables of Tables for the same reason.
Usually found immediately after the Table of Contents, these two listings generally list the figures - screenshots and representational drawings - and the tables within the book using their captions as descriptors. These tables are not as widely used by readers as the Table of Contents or the index, but they do provide an alternate route to quickly find specific information throughout the book.
They also give the reader a sense of which concepts are most important in a book. Because the Table of Contents lists everything within a book, it doesn't give you any sense of what the key areas are. It's all listed and treated equally. But if a concept is important enough to warrant a representational drawing the reader knows it's something you particularly want them to understand well.
I personally don't like Tables of Tables; unlike the graphics which can tell you which concepts are important, the tables merely indicate that you need to present sets of data that best fit into tabular form. In addition, most books have a lot of tables and it's very intimidating to start a book with pages and pages of listed tables. It also sort of defeats the purpose (pointing out important information) when you're pointing out half of the book.
