Marker Style

You can change the shape of the marker (point) as well as its size, color, and border width. For example, if you are grouping by gender in a scatterplot, you can change the markers to gender symbols.

How to Change the Marker Style

  1. Select the markers.
  2. If the Properties window is not already displayed, from the menus choose:

    Edit > Properties

  3. Use the Marker tab to specify the style settings for the markers.
  4. Click Apply.

Using the Marker Tab

Preview. The preview area displays your current choices and shows what the marker or markers will look like when you click Apply.

Marker. Change the marker type, its size (in points), or the thickness of its border (in points). In general, avoid thick borders unless the marker size is also large. Thick borders on small markers can disguise the marker shape and fill color.

Color. Choose a color and pattern for the fill or border:

  1. Click the swatch next to Fill or Border to indicate which you want to change.
  2. Click a color. The swatch changes to the color, and the red, green, and blue settings (R,G,B) appear below the swatch. The color displaying white with a diagonal red line through it is the transparent color. You can customize a color by selecting it and clicking Edit to open a standard dialog box for customizing colors. Use the last row for creating custom colors. Click Reset to revert to the original settings for all colors.

Tip

For some datasets, you might want to use the data value label as the marker. For example, if your chart includes data for U.S. states, you could use the state's two-letter abbreviation instead of a regular marker. Or you might have data that consist of high- and low-frequency words, in which case you want to use H or L for the data markers. You can substitute the markers with data labels:

  1. Display the data labels for all graphic elements.
  2. Use the Data Value Labels tab to specify the correct variable as the content of the label and center the label on the graphic element. Make sure that Suppress overlapping labels is not selected.
  3. Set the border and fill for the marker to transparent.