Apply suggestions from code review

Co-authored-by: Tim Hoffmann <[email protected]>

Author: jklymak

doc/users/faq/howto_faq.rst

@@ -15,12 +15,12 @@ How-to
 Why do I have so many ticks, and/or why are they out of order?
 --------------------------------------------------------------
 
-One common cause for unexpected tick behavior is passing a list of strings
-instead of numbers or datetime objects. This can easily happen without notice
+One common cause for unexpected tick behavior is passing a *list of strings
+instead of numbers or datetime objects*. This can easily happen without notice
 when reading in a comma-delimited text file. Matplotlib treats lists of strings
-as "categorical" variables
+as *categorical* variables
 (:doc:`/gallery/lines_bars_and_markers/categorical_variables`), and by default
-puts one tick per "category", and plots them in the order in which they are
+puts one tick per category, and plots them in the order in which they are
 supplied.
 
 .. plot::

examples/ticks/ticks_too_many.py

@@ -6,14 +6,18 @@
 One common cause for unexpected tick behavior is passing a list of strings
 instead of numbers or datetime objects. This can easily happen without notice
 when reading in a comma-delimited text file. Matplotlib treats lists of strings
-as "categorical" variables
+as *categorical* variables
 (:doc:`/gallery/lines_bars_and_markers/categorical_variables`), and by default
-puts one tick per "category", and plots them in the order in which they are
+puts one tick per category, and plots them in the order in which they are
 supplied.  If this is not desired, the solution is to convert the strings to
 a numeric type as in the following examples.
 
 """
 
+############################################################################
+# Example 1: Strings can lead to an unexpected order of number ticks
+# ------------------------------------------------------------------
+
 import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
 import numpy as np
 
@@ -32,6 +36,8 @@
 ax[1].set_title('Ticks as expected')
 
 ############################################################################
+# Example 2: Strings can lead to very many ticks
+# ----------------------------------------------
 # If *x* has 100 elements, all strings, then we would have 100 (unreadable)
 # ticks, and again the solution is to convert the strings to floats:
 
@@ -48,6 +54,8 @@
 ax[1].set_xlabel('Floats')
 
 ############################################################################
+# Example 3: Strings can lead to an unexpected order of datetime ticks
+# --------------------------------------------------------------------
 # A common case is when dates are read from a CSV file, they need to be
 # converted from strings to datetime objects to get the proper date locators
 # and formatters.