Set Axis Label Position in ggplot2

Set Axis Label Position in ggplot2, To change the axis label location in ggplot2, use the following syntax.

theme(axis.title.x = element_text(margin=margin(t=70)),
axis.title.y = element_text(margin=margin(r=40)))

For the margin argument, you can use the letters t, r, b, and l, which stand for top, right, bottom, and left, respectively.

The examples below demonstrate how to utilize this syntax in practice.

Example 1: Set X-Axis Label Position

Let’s say we use ggplot2 to make the following scatterplot:

library(ggplot2)

Now create a data frame

df <- data.frame(x=c(10, 12, 24, 25, 37, 38, 49, 50),
y=c(102, 107, 207, 309, 500, 507, 606, 400))

Now we can create a scatterplot of x vs. y

ggplot(df, aes(x=x, y=y)) +
  geom_point()

To make the x-axis title look further from the axis, we can add a margin to the top of it:

generate an x vs. y scatterplot with a margin on the x-axis title

ggplot(df, aes(x=x, y=y)) +
  geom_point() +
  theme(axis.title.x = element_text(margin = margin(t = 70)))

The x-axis title and the x-axis have been separated by a substantial amount of space.

To make the y-axis title seem further from the axis, we may use the following code to create a margin to the right of it:

generate an x vs. y scatterplot with a margin on the y-axis title

ggplot(df, aes(x=x, y=y)) +
  geom_point() +
  theme(axis.title.y = element_text(margin = margin(r = 70)))

The y-axis title and the y-axis are separated by a substantial amount of space.