A box diagram or passing table is a way of notating multi-person passing patterns, used in the Madison Area Jugglers Pattern Book and on jugglingfan.org. Box diagrams are often accompanied by illustrations of the relative positions of the jugglers.
A pattern is notated in the form of a table, where each row shows the repeating sequence of throws made by a certain juggler. In patterns where each person only passes with one hand, the throws made by the other hands (which are all identical self throws) can be left out of the diagram. An extra row of letters at the top of the table can be used to indicate which hand throws on each beat.
A letter is assigned to each juggler, and the letters are written on the left side of the table to show which row contains the instructions for each person. When someone throws to another juggler, the letter for the person they're throwing to is written in the cell for the juggler making that throw on that beat. A cell with no letter represents a self throw.
Unless otherwise noted, it can generally be assumed that there are 3 objects per person, each person is juggling at the same speed with alternate right and left hand throws, all the juggler's right hands throw at the same time, all the throws are the same height, all right hand throws go to a left hand, and all left hand throws go to a right hand. For patterns like that to be valid, each column in the table can only contain one instance of each letter.
Example[]
4-person sweep feed (only right-hand throws are shown):
| R | R | R | R | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | B | C | D | C |
| B | A | - | - | - |
| C | - | A | - | A |
| D | - | - | A | - |