document updated 13 years ago, on Apr 14, 2011

Best-practices for creating knot diagrams.

All diagrams MUST clearly distinguish the standing end from the working end. This is by far the most common failure I see in knot diagrams, even in otherwise professional publications. I believe this is mostly because once people become experts, they understand knots better, and can more quickly infer where the standing end is. However, for neophytes, this can be a bigger stumbling block. Options for doing this include: 1) depicting the working end as having whipping, or 2) depict the standing end as fading off into the distance.
When showing multiple stages of knot construction, depict the "finished" portion of the knot in a different color, to make it clearer which part of the rope will still be modified, and especially to focus the viewer's attention on the "intermediate" area between the "finished" and working-end of the rope, since the intermediate area is where the main work is being done in each step.