Typographic conventions for width of figures in LaTeX data analysis reports I've been thinking recently about conventions for figure width in data analysis reports that lead to PDFs (e.g., in A4 or Letter size). My usual context is R, Sweave, and LaTeX.
The default figure width in Sweave is 80% of the text-width (i.e., the width of a paragraph of text).
\setkeys{Gin}{width=0.80\textwidth}

Questions:


*

*Is it reasonable for the width of figures to be wider than the text-width (i.e., to spill into the margins)?

*Is the 80% rule of text-width a good one or would, for example 100%, or some other value be better?

*Should the figure widths be consistent throughout a document (or perhaps with two sizes for small and large figures) or should the width be adapted completely to the content?


Any references or thoughts on best practice in this regards would be most welcome.
 A: I'll second @onestop comment about the fact that this question seems marginally related to statistical analysis or reporting. 
That being said, I can't refrain from thinking of Ed. Tufte's work on the display of quantitative information, especially the design of his books which mixes different graphics layouts: some figures or tables are put in the margin, other in the body with caption in the margin, and large figures may extend beyond the body (full page width). The tufte-latex project offers $\LaTeX$ classes for articles/handouts and books in the spirit of Ed. Tufte's design. Some examples are included on the project page; I particularly like the example handout.
On a related point, I also like the tutorial from the vegan R package.
My personal approach is to use 80% or 100% of text width (and keep it consistent across all the document), but I often play with the width, height, and cex arguments of pdf() when exporting figure so as to get the most clean and readable figure. It also happens to me to rely on a different layout--figure 60% and caption 40%, side by side, 100% of text width--for small illustrations or graphics.
