I see your point. Though how does your advice scale to logarithmic scales? (I.e. what's a general reason to allow logarithmic scales, but not affine ones?)
The following paper on lucidity in scientific communication has been a big influence on my thoughts. Briefly, the author stresses that you should aim for lucid pattern repetition over gratuitious variation, i.e. the repetition of the same idea communicated in similar ways, over variety for the sake of appearing to be superficially interesting.
http://www.atm.damtp.cam.ac.uk/mcintyre/papers/LHCE/lucidity...