A picture is worth a thousand words

A picture is worth a thousand words

"A picture is worth a thousand words" is a proverb that refers to the idea that complex stories can be described with just a single still image, or that an image may be more influential than a substantial amount of text. It also aptly characterizes the goals of visualization where large amounts of data must be absorbed quickly.

It is believed that the modern use of the phrase stems from an article by Fred R. Barnard in the advertising trade journal "Printers' Ink", promoting the use of images in advertisements that appeared on the sides of streetcars. [cite web
last =
first =
authorlink =
coauthors =
title = The history of a picture's worth
work =
publisher =
date =
url = http://www2.cs.uregina.ca/~hepting/research/web/words/history.html
accessdate =2008-07-12 ] The December 8, 1921 issue carries an ad entitled, "One Look is Worth A Thousand Words."

Another ad by Barnard appears in the March 10, 1927 issue with the phrase "One Picture is Worth Ten Thousand Words," where it is labelled a Chinese proverb (畫意能達萬言). "The Home Book of Proverbs, Maxims, and Familiar Phrases" quotes Barnard as saying he called it "a Chinese proverb, so that people would take it seriously." Soon after, the proverb would become popularly attributed to Confucius.

Despite this modern origin of the popular phrase, the sentiment has been expressed by earlier writers. For example the Russian writer Ivan Turgenev wrote (in "Fathers and Sons" in 1862), "A picture shows me at a glance what it takes dozens of pages of a book to expound."

The quote is sometimes attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte, who said "Un bon croquis vaut mieux qu'un long discours," or "A good sketch is better than a long speech". While this is sometimes translated today as "A picture is worth a thousand words," this translation may not predate the phrase's common use in English.

The phrase has also been spoofed by John McCarthy, the famous computer scientist, to make the opposite point: "As the Chinese say, 1001 words is worth more than a picture." [cite web
last = McCarthy
first = John
title = THE SAYINGS OF JOHN MCCARTHY ( 1-Mar-2007)
url=http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/sayings.html
accessdate = 2007-11-09 ]

References

*"The Dictionary of Clichés" by James Rogers (Ballantine Books, New York, 1985).


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