concept linespoint in category gnuplot

This is an excerpt from Manning's book Gnuplot in Action: Understanding Data with Graphs. Login to get full access to this book.

By default, data points from a file are plotted using unconnected symbols. Often this isn’t what we want, so we need to tell gnuplot what style to use for the data. This is done using the with directive. Many different styles are available. Among the most useful ones are with linespoints, which plots each data point as a symbol and also connects subsequent points, and with lines, which just plots the connecting lines, omitting the individual symbols.

plot "prices" using 1:2 with lines, "prices" using 1:3 with linespoints

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plot "data" u 1:2 with lines, "" u 1:3 with linespoints, "" u 1:4 with points

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There are four styles I would call “core” styles, because they are so generally useful: with points, with lines, with linespoints, and with dots. These styles represent data with simple symbols or lines on the plot (see figure 5.3).

Figure 5.3. The four core styles: with points, with lines, with linespoints, and with dots