Reading · 16 min
The sentence the chart does not write
This reading is a short sales report. The skill is the language of a trend: up, down, level, sharper than, and compared with. A chart is not a feeling, and a line that climbs is not a sentence the writer has agreed to. Two comparisons can point different ways. Up against last month is not the same as beating the plan, and a rise that is sharper than last month can still be uneven across accounts. Do not promote an adjective such as healthy into the main idea. The questions will tempt you with the picture. Choose the sentence that names the comparison and the limit.
Read it in English first. The other language is a gloss, not the task.
1
A short sales report is easy to misread when it opens with a mood. Calling May healthy asks the reader to feel a picture. The picture is not a sentence. Northline's May orders were up 6 percent compared with April, and the rise was not even. Coastal accounts rose. Inland accounts were level. A reader who hears only up will staff and buy as if the whole book had moved. It had not. Half the accounts did what they did in April. The first job of the report is to separate a rise from a rise that is shared. Up is a direction. It is not a map of which accounts moved.
2
Trend language has a small set of honest words. Rose, fell, and level are claims a colleague can check. Sharper than compares two slopes. It is not a compliment. May's rise was sharper than April's, which does not mean May beat the plan. Compared with last May is a third comparison, and it can point the other way. A report that stacks up, strong, and momentum has used three words and no comparison. The reader still does not know the base. Write the base in the same sentence as the verb. Orders rose 6 percent compared with April, and fell 2 percent compared with the plan. Both lines can be true. Leaving one out is how a chart becomes a feeling.
3
A chart can also mislead by what it never marks. A line that climbs for three weeks and drops in the fourth can still finish above the start. Calling the month up is true and incomplete. The useful sentence says where the turn was. Orders rose through the 20th and fell in the last week, ending 2 percent above April. A buyer who places stock on that first reading will place it for a rise that has already stopped. The same care applies to level. Level against April can hide a slow fall against the plan. Say both, or say that you do not have the second figure yet. Silence is not a mild way of being accurate. It is a missing comparison.
4
The close of the report is the action the trend still allows. If inland accounts are level because two buyers delayed, the next step is a call to those buyers, not a larger order for the coast. If the sharper rise came from one contract, name the contract, so the room does not staff against a month that will not repeat. A chart does not feel proud or worried. It shows a direction for a period you must name. The sentence has to carry the direction, the comparison, and the limit. Anything softer is a caption under a picture. Captions do not place stock, and they do not tell a colleague which account to call on Thursday.
Questions
Answer every question, then check.