Rotating x axis labels in R for barplot

Question

I am trying to get the x axis labels to be rotated 45 degrees on a barplot with no luck. This is the code I have below:

barplot(((data1[,1] - average)/average) * 100,
        srt       = 45,
        adj       = 1,
        xpd       = TRUE,
        names.arg = data1[,2],
        col       = c("#3CA0D0"),
        main      = "Best Lift Time to Vertical Drop Ratios of North American Resorts",
        ylab      = "Normalized Difference",
        yaxt      = 'n',
        cex.names = 0.65,
        cex.lab   = 0.65)

score 327 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 11 '15 at 13:39

327

use optional parameter las=2 .

barplot(mytable,main="Car makes",ylab="Freqency",xlab="make",las=2)

enter image description here

answered Jan 11 '15 at 13:39

Michael Z

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I believe that this should be the accepted answer. Works perfectly using a parameter of the base barplot function used in the question. – jwhaley58 Nov 08 '16 at 15:06
1

Agreed, this should be the accepted answer. Much more concise solution – snlan Feb 01 '17 at 13:30
24

use par(mar=c(15,4,4,2)) to adjust the margins so the vertical labels are not cropped from the figure. – Steven Magana-Zook Feb 10 '17 at 20:43
30

I personally prefer this approach, but it did not answer the OP's original question: _I am trying to get the x axis labels to be rotated 45 degrees on a barplot_ – arpieb Mar 04 '17 at 22:22
1

you can see 'make' is covered by labels. How to fix it? – Filip Bartuzi Jun 21 '20 at 14:47
that 'make' shown below the plot can be removed by adding title = "". – ibilgen Sep 02 '20 at 13:54

Tyler Rinker · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-25T17:55:51.407

67

EDITED ANSWER PER DAVID'S RESPONSE:

Here's a kind of hackish way. I'm guessing there's an easier way. But you could suppress the bar labels and the plot text of the labels by saving the bar positions from barplot and do a little tweaking up and down. Here's an example with the mtcars data set:

x <- barplot(table(mtcars$cyl), xaxt="n")
labs <- paste(names(table(mtcars$cyl)), "cylinders")
text(cex=1, x=x-.25, y=-1.25, labs, xpd=TRUE, srt=45)

edited May 25 '17 at 17:55

answered Apr 23 '12 at 19:08

Tyler Rinker

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_caveat_: If you're using `beside = TRUE`, you'll probably want to use `colMeans(x)` instead of just `x` if you want only one label per group. – MichaelChirico Oct 07 '16 at 03:59

score 32 · Answer 3 · edited Sep 23 '22 at 08:49

Rotate the x axis labels with angle equal or smaller than 90 degrees using base graphics. Code adapted from the R FAQ:

par(mar = c(7, 4, 2, 2) + 0.2) #add room for the rotated labels

#use mtcars dataset to produce a barplot with qsec colum information
mtcars = mtcars[with(mtcars, order(-qsec)), ] #order mtcars data set by column "qsec"

end_point = 0.5 + nrow(mtcars) + nrow(mtcars) - 1 #this is the line which does the trick (together with barplot "space = 1" parameter)

barplot(mtcars$qsec, col = "grey50", 
        main = "",
        ylab = "mtcars - qsec", ylim = c(0,5 + max(mtcars$qsec)),
        xlab = "",
        xaxt = "n", # Do not plot the default labels
        space = 1)
#rotate 60 degrees (srt = 60)
text(seq(1.5, end_point, by = 2), par("usr")[3]-0.25, 
     srt = 60, adj = 1, xpd = TRUE,
     labels = paste(rownames(mtcars)), cex = 0.65)

enter image description here

What use `text()`? `axis()` does not work? – user1424739 Aug 16 '21 at 03:21 — user1424739, Aug 16 '21 at 03:21

score 13 · Answer 4 · answered Feb 16 '18 at 04:39

You can simply pass your data frame into the following function:

rotate_x <- function(data, column_to_plot, labels_vec, rot_angle) {
    plt <- barplot(data[[column_to_plot]], col='steelblue', xaxt="n")
    text(plt, par("usr")[3], labels = labels_vec, srt = rot_angle, adj = c(1.1,1.1), xpd = TRUE, cex=0.6) 
}

Usage:

rotate_x(mtcars, 'mpg', row.names(mtcars), 45)

You can change the rotation angle of the labels as needed.

score 9 · Answer 5 · edited Aug 19 '14 at 12:08

9

You may use

par(las=2) # make label text perpendicular to axis

It is written here: http://www.statmethods.net/graphs/bar.html

edited Aug 19 '14 at 12:08

Peter O.

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answered Aug 19 '14 at 12:03

vlad

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score 9 · Answer 6 · answered Jul 03 '18 at 05:31

9

You can use ggplot2 to rotate the x-axis label adding an additional layer

theme(axis.text.x = element_text(angle = 90, hjust = 1))

answered Jul 03 '18 at 05:31

banan3'14 · Answer 7 · 2021-09-12T15:33:54.157

6

In the documentation of Bar Plots we can read about the additional parameters (...) which can be passed to the function call:

...    arguments to be passed to/from other methods. For the default method these can 
       include further arguments (such as axes, asp and main) and graphical 
       parameters (see par) which are passed to plot.window(), title() and axis.

In the documentation of graphical parameters (documentation of par) we can see:

las
    numeric in {0,1,2,3}; the style of axis labels.

    0:
      always parallel to the axis [default],

    1:
      always horizontal,

    2:
      always perpendicular to the axis,

    3:
      always vertical.

    Also supported by mtext. Note that string/character rotation via argument srt to par does not affect the axis labels.

That is why passing las=2 makes the labels perpendicular, although not at 45°.

edited Sep 12 '21 at 15:33

answered Dec 18 '19 at 22:14

banan3'14

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perpendicular is not 45 degrees! – Tomas Sep 12 '21 at 15:22
@Tomas fair enough, I edited the last sentence. – banan3'14 Sep 12 '21 at 15:34
The point is that it is not an answer to the question. – Tomas Sep 12 '21 at 16:13

score 2 · Answer 8 · answered May 03 '16 at 22:14

2

Andre Silva's answer works great for me, with one caveat in the "barplot" line:

barplot(mtcars$qsec, col="grey50", 
    main="",
    ylab="mtcars - qsec", ylim=c(0,5+max(mtcars$qsec)),
    xlab = "",
    xaxt = "n", 
    space=1)

Notice the "xaxt" argument. Without it, the labels are drawn twice, the first time without the 60 degree rotation.

answered May 03 '16 at 22:14

Alvaro Gonzalez

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where is the 45 degree rotation? – Tomas Sep 12 '21 at 15:23

Rotating x axis labels in R for barplot

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