The Georgia Negro: A Social Study - Bar graph shows number of males in various occupations in 1890 [LCCN2013650447]
The pattern
This still is filed under Data as proof.
Define
A chart, map, or count that is the argument, not an illustration next to the argument.
Mechanism
Sighted evidence. The reader is asked to believe their eyes: a bar, a share, a spread on a map.
Verdict
The claim is comparative or quantitative and the figure can be read without a caption doing the sell.
Why it works
The hairpin fold on the top bar is the decision that carries the plate: rather than rescale the axis and flatten the difference, the designer lets the largest value break the frame and double back, so the shock of the scale survives instead of being normalised away. The brace performs the same re-aggregation used elsewhere in the series, turning a long tail of trades into one comparable quantity. The vast empty right half is not leftover space - it is the argument, showing how little of the workforce exists outside the top three lines.
Steal this when
When one category dwarfs the rest and rescaling would hide the point. Let the biggest bar break the frame and wrap, and brace the long tail into a single bar so the reader sees both the dominance and the sum of everything else.