Increase spaces between x values of boxplot (overlapping x labels)

Question

Hello I am very new to using coding language and recently made my first couple of figures in R. I used this code to make the figures and they turned out good except that the labels in the x axis were overlapping.

library(ggplot2)
ggplot(LR_density, aes(x=Plant_Lines, y=`Lateral_Root_Density.(root/cm)`, fill=Expression_Type)) + 
    geom_boxplot() +
    geom_jitter(color="black", size=0.4, alpha=0.9) +
    ggtitle("Lateral root density across plant expression types")

The figure produced by the line of code I used

I was wondering if anyone knew how to get the x axis labels to be more spaced out in ggplot2 boxplots. I have been looking around but havent found a clear answer on this. Any help on what to do or where to look would be great!

maybe try rotating the x-axis labels? stackoverflow.com/questions/15838533/… — StupidWolf
– StupidWolf, Commented Apr 25, 2020 at 22:49
you can rotate the axis label by setting the theme theme(axis.text.x = element_text(angle = <angle>)) — yang
– yang, Commented Apr 26, 2020 at 0:59
apparently, since ggplot2 3.3.0 you can also dodge your x labels - datavizpyr.com/… I have not yet used this though. I think the best is to size your output device as suggested by @user20650, define the font size accordingly. If the labels still overlap, and you have tried rotating them, you can also flip the plot, so that the labels are better readable on the y axis. — tjebo
– tjebo, Commented Apr 26, 2020 at 15:56

tjebo · Accepted Answer · 2020-04-30 13:26:48Z

1

As per comment, this thread shows another option to deal with overlapping x axis labels, which one can use since ggplot2 3.3.0

In included a second graph which "squeezes" the axis a bit, which kind of also simulates the effect of changing the viewport/ file size.

library(ggplot2)

ggplot(diamonds, aes(x = cut, y = price)) +
  geom_boxplot() +
  scale_x_discrete(guide = guide_axis(n.dodge = 2))


ggplot(diamonds, aes(x = cut, y = price)) +
  geom_boxplot() +
  scale_x_discrete(guide = guide_axis(n.dodge = 2)) +
  coord_fixed(1/10^3.4)

^{Created on 2020-04-30 by the reprex package (v0.3.0)}

answered Apr 30, 2020 at 13:26

tjebo

24.1k8 gold badges73 silver badges108 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Increase spaces between x values of boxplot (overlapping x labels)

1 Answer 1

Comments

Your Answer

Linked

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Linked

Related