Rotating and spacing axis labels in ggplot2 in R

Last Updated : 15 Nov, 2021

In this article, we will discuss how to Rotate and space axis labels in the ggplot2 in the R Programming Language.

Spacing the axis labels:

We can increase or decrease the space between the axis label and axis using the theme function. The axis.txt.x / axis.text.y parameter of theme() function is used to adjust the spacing using hjust and vjust argument of the element_text() function.

Syntax:

plot + theme( axis.text.x / axis.text.y = element_text( hjust, vjust )

where,

hjust: determines the horizontal justification
vjust: determines the vertical justification

Example:

In this example, we have added vertical space of 10 points using vjust command of theme function in the ggplot2 plot in the R Language.

# Create sample data
set.seed(5642)                             
sample_data <- data.frame(name = c("Geek1","Geek2",
                                   "Geek3","Geek4",
                                   "Geeek5") ,
                          value = c(31,12,15,28,45)) 

# Load ggplot2 package
library("ggplot2") 

# Create bar plot using ggplot() function
ggplot(sample_data,
             aes(name,value,, color=name)) + 

# geom_bar function is used to plot bars 
# of barplot
geom_bar(stat = "identity", fill="white")+

# vjust is used to justify the label vertically
theme(axis.text.x = element_text(vjust=-10))

Output:

Rotating Axis Labels

We can rotate the axis label and axis using the theme function. The axis.txt.x / axis.text.y parameter of theme() function is used to adjust the rotation of labels using the angle argument of the element_text() function.

Syntax:

plot + theme( axis.text.x / axis.text.y = element_text( angle )

where,

angle: determines the angle of rotation

Example:

In this example, we have made the rotation angle 90 degrees using the angle command of the theme function in the ggplot2 plot in the R Language. This makes the axis labels vertical.

# Create sample data
set.seed(5642)                             
sample_data <- data.frame(name = c("Geek1","Geek2",
                                   "Geek3","Geek4",
                                   "Geeek5") ,
                          value = c(31,12,15,28,45)) 

# Load ggplot2 package
library("ggplot2") 

# Create bar plot using ggplot() function
ggplot(sample_data,
             aes(name,value,, color=name)) + 

# geom_bar function is used to plot bars 
# of barplot
geom_bar(stat = "identity", fill="white")+

# rotate axis label using axis.text.x parameter
# of theme() 90 degree rotation makes label 
# vertical
theme(axis.text.x = element_text(angle = 90))

Output:

Example:

In this example, we have rotated the axis label by 45 degrees that made it overlapping with the plot. so we moved it down using the vjust parameter to avoid overlapping.

# Create sample data
set.seed(5642)                             
sample_data <- data.frame(name = c("Geek1","Geek2",
                                   "Geek3","Geek4",
                                   "Geeek5") ,
                          value = c(31,12,15,28,45)) 

# Load ggplot2 package
library("ggplot2") 

# Create bar plot using ggplot() function
ggplot(sample_data,
             aes(name,value,, color=name)) + 

# geom_bar function is used to plot bars 
# of barplot
geom_bar(stat = "identity", fill="white")+

# rotate axis label using axis.text.x parameter of theme()
# vjust is used to justify the label to avoid 
# overlapping with plot
theme(axis.text.x = element_text(angle = 45, vjust=0.5))