Increase distance between text and title on the y-axis
RLayoutPlotGgplot2R Problem Overview
The y-axis title appears too close to the axis text.
ggplot(mpg, aes(cty, hwy)) + geom_point()
I have tried changing the value of many parameters with theme()
but none seems to help.
R Solutions
Solution 1 - R
From ggplot2 2.0.0
you can use the margin =
argument of element_text()
to change the distance between the axis title and the numbers. Set the values of the margin
on t
op, r
ight, b
ottom, and l
eft side of the element.
ggplot(mpg, aes(cty, hwy)) + geom_point()+
theme(axis.title.y = element_text(margin = margin(t = 0, r = 20, b = 0, l = 0)))
margin
can also be used for other element_text
elements (see ?theme
), such as axis.text.x
, axis.text.y
and title
.
addition
in order to set the margin for axis titles when the axis has a different position (e.g., with scale_x_...(position = "top")
, you'll need a different theme setting - e.g. axis.title.x.top
. See https://github.com/tidyverse/ggplot2/issues/4343.
Solution 2 - R
Based on this forum post: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/ggplot2/mK9DR3dKIBU
Sounds like the easiest thing to do is to add a line break (\n) before your x axis, and after your y axis labels. Seems a lot easier (although dumber) than the solutions posted above.
ggplot(mpg, aes(cty, hwy)) +
geom_point() +
xlab("\nYour_x_Label") + ylab("Your_y_Label\n")
Hope that helps!
Solution 3 - R
A solution that offers more fine-grained control than \n
but is less cumbersome than adding margins is to use vjust
in the theme
function.
For adjusting the position on the y-axis or (x-axis) to add space, this often requires using a positive value for vjust
(y-axis) or a negative value for vjust
(x-axis) as in theme(axis.title.y = element_text(vjust = 2))
. See a fully worked example below.
# load patchwork to show plots side-by-side
library(patchwork)
library(ggplot2)
# Plot A: just for comparison, moving titles *inward*
p1 <- ggplot(mpg, aes(cty, hwy)) +
geom_point() +
theme_gray() +
theme(
axis.title.y = element_text(vjust = -3),
axis.title.x = element_text(vjust = +3)
)
# Plot B: what we want, moving titles *outward*
p2 <- ggplot(mpg, aes(cty, hwy)) +
geom_point() +
theme_gray() +
theme(
axis.title.y = element_text(vjust = +3),
axis.title.x = element_text(vjust = -0.75)
)
# show plots side-by-side with patchwork package
p1 + p2 +
plot_annotation(tag_levels = "A")
Solution 4 - R
For some reason the margin argument suggested by Didzis Elferts did not work for me. So, I used a different hack that is more flexible than adding an empty line but needs giving up the axis ticks.
myplot + theme(axis.ticks.x = element_blank(), axis.ticks.length.x = unit(3.25, "cm")
I guess, one can add the tick marks manually with geom_segment
. Another possibility might be [ggalt::annotation_ticks][1]
but I didn't bother trying either (note the current version of ggalt on CRAN (0.4) does not support this function, the one on github (0.6) does).