Rotating axis labels in R

Question

How do I make a (bar) plot's y axis labels parallel to the X axis instead of parallel to the Y axis?

See http://cran.r-project.org/doc/FAQ/R-FAQ.html#How-can-I-create-rotated-axis-labels_003f — Stéphane Laurent, Feb 19 '13 at 16:42

score 190 · Accepted Answer · edited Oct 23 '16 at 19:06

190

Not sure if this is what you mean, but try setting las=1. Here's an example:

require(grDevices)
tN <- table(Ni <- stats::rpois(100, lambda=5))
r <- barplot(tN, col=rainbow(20), las=1)

That represents the style of axis labels. (0=parallel, 1=all horizontal, 2=all perpendicular to axis, 3=all vertical)

edited Oct 23 '16 at 19:06

doncherry

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answered Dec 01 '09 at 20:56

Shane

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it works, but it trim labels. So additional options may be required. – boczniak767 Oct 21 '14 at 20:22
Is there an easy way to rotate the axis ticks labels? E.g. if I have larger numbers as axis tick labels, it is nice to have them rotated by around 45 degrees to strike a good balance between readability (horizontal) and space efficiency (vertical). – jmb Aug 25 '19 at 19:31

score 94 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 01 '09 at 20:56

94

Use par(las=1).

See ?par:

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.

answered Dec 01 '09 at 20:56

rcs

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Is there a way to set it so that only the x axis labels are perpendicular to the axis? – andrewj Aug 26 '12 at 06:46
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Te style can be set for each axis separately, e.g. `plot(1, xaxt="n", yaxt="n"); axis(1, las=2); axis(2, las=1)` – rcs Aug 26 '12 at 11:49
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always backup par before doing any changes like that: old.par <- par(no.readonly=T) :-) – HongboZhu Mar 10 '14 at 14:11

score 22 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 25 '15 at 17:29

22

As Maciej Jończyk mentioned, you may also need to increase margins

par(las=2)
par(mar=c(8,8,1,1)) # adjust as needed
plot(...)

answered Jan 25 '15 at 17:29

fedorn

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MCH · Answer 4 · 2019-11-14T15:30:48.597

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You need to use theme() function as follows rotating x-axis labels by 90 degrees:

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

edited Nov 14 '19 at 15:30

answered Dec 03 '15 at 13:10

MCH

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should be 90 degrees – C8H10N4O2 Aug 17 '17 at 22:45

score 2 · Answer 5 · answered Oct 20 '18 at 09:03

First, create the data for the chart

H <- c(1.964138757, 1.729143013,    1.713273714,    1.706771799,    1.67977205)
M <- c("SP105", "SP30", "SP244", "SP31",    "SP147")

Second, give the name for a chart file

png(file = "Bargraph.jpeg", width = 500, height = 300)

Third, Plot the bar chart

barplot(H,names.arg=M,ylab="Degree ", col= rainbow(5), las=2, border = 0, cex.lab=1, cex.axis=1, font=1,col.axis="black")
title(xlab="Service Providers", line=4, cex.lab=1)

Finally, save the file

dev.off()

Output:

Rotating axis labels in R

5 Answers5

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