The technique developed in this research paper for analyzing the information in charts and graphs is designed to reveal design flaws in the display that may prevent them from conveying information effectively. This analytic scheme requires isolating four types of constituents in a display and specifying their structure and interrelations at the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic levels of analysis. As the description is constructed, one checks for violations of "acceptability principles," which are derived from facts about human visual information processing drawn from the literature and from a theoretical analysis of the nature of symbols as developed by Goodman (1968). Violations of these principles reveal the source of potential difficulties in using a display. Although this analysis is intended to be a very refined method and the "violations" identified may in fact be irrelevant, this cannot be known without knowing the purpose of the display. A relatively simple example is used to illustrate these ideas, and a very complex example is appended. The text is supported by a table and 4 figures and a 29-item reference list is provided. (RP)