how to correct x axis text placement when the angle is between 45 and 90?

Question

I'm struggling to understand the interactions for ggplot's axis.text.x: angle, hjust and vjust. Everything I've read works when angle is between 0 and 45, but not for angles > 45 and < 90.

Below is a minimal reproducible example:

library(ggplot2)   
p <- ggplot(mtcars, aes(1000 * mpg, hp)) +
      geom_point()

The first plot with angle = 90 looks as expected,

p + theme(axis.text.x = element_text(angle = 90, hjust = 1, vjust = 0.5))

However, when decreasing the angle by only 1 degree compared with the plot above (from angle = 90 to angle = 89), the axis labels are shifted down.

p + theme(axis.text.x = element_text(angle = 89, hjust = 1, vjust = 0.5))

Any insight appreciated.

Try looking at this question: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1330989/rotating-and-spacing-axis-labels-in-ggplot2 — Ryan John, Jun 27 '19 at 18:05
Things look somewhat OK if just using `vjust = 0.5`, but I can't figure out the logic of what `hjust` is doing in your second case. — aosmith, Jun 27 '19 at 18:18

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 31 '21 at 14:25

0

Try specifying both vjust = 0.5 and hjust = 0.5 then you avoid the problem.

ggplot(mtcars, aes(x = 1000*mpg, y = hp)) +
geom_point() +
theme(
axis.text.x = element_text(angle = 75, vjust = .5, hjust = .5)
)

answered Jan 31 '21 at 14:25

iouraich

2,496
4
26
40

how to correct x axis text placement when the angle is between 45 and 90?

1 Answers1