Gridlines

Standard gridlines, placed behind the bars.

Axis labels should be at the bottom.

Spacing

As with a horizontal bar chart, bars should always be evenly spaced.

Labelling

Stacked bar charts should have a standard legend. This should be in the same order as the bars left to right.

Direct labelling

In most cases, stacked horizontal bar charts should not be directly labelled with the data values. An exception could be where your data has few categories and all data points.

Bars

No transparency – bars should be fully opaque.

The bars should not have rounded corners.

Markers

Where stacks include positive and negative values, markers can be used to show a total. For marker style see the template for bar chart with markers