Can you vary text size within the same ggplot2 axis?

Question

I'd like to use ggplot2 to make a plot where the axis text size varies between labels- for example, larger font every five ticks with smaller font for the intervening ticks. I looked at using minor_breaks in scale_x_continuous, but I couldn't find a way to label the minor breaks.

The best I've got to work so far is a modification from this answer where I use bquote to pass an expression for the axis labels:

label_span <- 1:40

ShrinkIf <- Vectorize(function(val) {
  if (val %% 5 == 0) return(as.character(val))
  return(bquote(scriptstyle(.(as.character(val)))))
})

x_labels <- ShrinkIf(label_span)

x_labels <- purrr::invoke(expression, x_labels)

ggplot(mtcars, aes(x = mpg , y = hp)) +
  geom_point() + 
  scale_x_continuous(breaks = label_span, labels = x_labels)

Is there a better way to go about this, or maybe a way with a little more control of the label size (or even font choice / text decoration, etc)? Thanks in advance for your help!

MrFlick · Accepted Answer · 2021-04-22 19:20:54Z

2

You can create a vector of text sizes and add it using element_text()

library(ggplot2)
ggplot(mtcars, aes(x = mpg, y = hp)) + 
    geom_point() + 
    theme(
        axis.text.x = element_text(size = rep(c(12,24), 3))
    )

example

edited Apr 22, 2021 at 19:20

MrFlick

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answered Apr 22, 2021 at 19:16

Snipeskies

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1 Comment

Luke C Over a year ago

Clean and simple, that'll do it. Thanks!

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