Ggplot text annotation outside plot. How to annota...

Ggplot text annotation outside plot. How to annotate a plot in ggplot2 Once your chart is done, annotating it is a crucial step to make it more insightful. Additionally, I need to add text outside the panel, specifically below the x-axis (outside the circle). Check out the below example to understand how it works. Both of these can be controlled with plot_layout() Add texts to your base R graphs with text and mtext functions. 2) Isn't there more systematic approach to the whole annotation process. Adding little details like plot annotations help you communicate more clearly and "tell a story" with your plots. We also need to install and load the ggplot2 package, if we want to use the functions that are included in the package: As next step, we can plot our data: As shown in F Nov 4, 2025 · Explore effective R ggplot2 methods to display text labels outside the plotting region when data limits are restricted, preventing label truncation. By combining annotate(), coord_cartesian(clip = "off"), and margin adjustments, you can place custom text precisely where needed. ) outside of the strips of a faceted plot. To add informative text such as a title, axis labels, or a caption to the plot's exterior, a data analyst utilizes the labs () function within the ggplot2 package. A great example of this is plot annotation. But I think @hadley is right, this normally is outside the scope of the plotting routine. Always ensure the axis and legend labels display the full variable name. I can get the annotation that I want, but it's repeated for each facet. ggtext is an R package (by Claus O. Annotations differ from data labels, in that their position is decoupled from their meaning. The post How to annotate a plot in ggplot2 appeared first on SHARP SIGHT LABS. Graphical Primitives a <- ggplot(economics, aes(date, unemploy)) b <- ggplot(seals, aes(x = long, y = lat)) Nov 24, 2025 · A curated ggplot2 hub for R. There are many scenarios where we need to annotate outside the plot area or specific area as per client requirements. (Note Sample code library(ggplot2) ggplot(mtcars, aes(mpg, cyl, color = vs)) + geom_line() How if it is possible to add arbitrary text to the x axis like in this example Most plots will not benefit from adding text to every single observation on the plot, but labelling outliers and other important points is very useful. Is this possible with ggplot or should I look to some other package to do this? 1) how to annotate outside of the plot, underline both "Country" and "Average" without extending the x-axis. The accepted answer works for me most of the way, but depending on the size of my plot, the annotations sometimes fall off my plot. up to 1000. margin(). As of ggplot 3. However, in most cases you start with ggplot(), supply a dataset and aesthetic mapping (with aes()). frame(x, y1, y2, y3) We want to plot y against x and remove the default space on both axis, so I did I want to add an annotation outside the plotting area in a faceted ggplot. Italicize the text “American Economic Review”. This is useful for adding small annotations (such as text labels) or if you have your data in vectors, and for some reason don't want to put them in a data frame. Insets can be thought as larger, but still self-contained annotations. geom_curve() draws a curved line. ggplot2 section Why annotating? geom_segment() draws a straight line between points (x, y) and (xend, yend). 2 I am trying to create the following plot and I want to add some additional illustration to the plot to point the reader to some important characteristics of it. Plotly Annotation Outside Plot Title: Enhancing Data Visualization with Plotly: Exploring Annotations Outside the Plot Introduction Plotly, a powerful data visualization library, offers a unique feature that allows users to add annotations outside the plot. Just call the ggplotly() function, and you’re done. How to create individual text elements for each facet in a ggplot2 graphic in R - R programming example code - Reproducible explanations - R programming tutorial 3 I want to create a plot that serves as a circular legend for a continuous variable. Here is an attempt at what you want that uses annotate (instead of geom_text) along with coord_cartesian with clip = "off", similar to the answer provided by Maurits Evers here: Add text outside plot area. 5)) What I would like to do is add text outside of my plot so that it looks something like (I used Microsoft Paint after exporting to image): I want to add two captions for the footer. 5. That’s where ggplot2 extensions come in very handy. While annotations inside the plot are commonly used to provide context and insights, annotating outside the plot offers additional It seems to me there are two ways of doing this. A system for 'declaratively' creating graphics, based on "The Grammar of Graphics". I know it would be possible to use annotate or geom_text to add text inside each facet but I'd prefer not to do so because sometimes the text can overlap the data. . Use the plot title and subtitle to explain the main findings. Perhaps asked a different way, how do you use annotation_custom() to draw segments outside the plot region between known data coords x0, y0 to x1, y1? I would be happy to receive Answers that simply had any old plot in the plot region but showed how to add line segments between known coordinates in the margin of the plot. 28 I am looking to add a small white text box, with custom text in the body of my ggplot plot. plotly: turn your ggplot interactive Another awesome feature of ggplot2 is its link with the plotly library. The first can be done easily by changing the margin in plot. Experiment with hjust, vjust, and styling to match your plot’s theme. It's common to use the caption to provide information about the data source. Add a second title. As you can see, our text label has a black border. (I've tried padding a single title with spaces to simulate two titles but this breaks down with repeated plots because of kerning. Visit the interactive graphic section of the gallery for more. But it seems that ggplot will only take 1. I got a request how one can add percentage labels inside the bars and how to highlight specific bars with {ggplot2}. tag can be used for adding identification tags to differentiate between multiple plots. Wilke) that helps in customizing the text present in ggplot2 plots. I am unable to place it at the desired location I have used grid pack to create grob and Bar charts are likely the most common chart type out there and come in several varieties. The second takes a bit more effort, as the text in italic is only part of a sentence. The main difference is that, unlike base graphics, ggplot works with dataframes and not individual vectors. How to annotate text elements to a graph created by the ggplot2 package in R - 3 R programming examples - Extensive R syntax in RStudio An extensive tutorial containing a general introduction to ggplot2 as well as many examples how to modify a ggplot, step by step. Dec 4, 2025 · Annotating the y-axis outside a ggplot2 plot—such as adding "High" below a threshold value—enhances clarity and highlights critical insights. This post will guide you through the best practices using R and ggplot2. : xlab(), ylab An annotation is a text element that can be placed anywhere in the plot. This function adds geoms to a plot, but unlike a typical geom function, the properties of the geoms are not mapped from variables of a data frame, but are instead passed in as vectors. Please let me know in the comments, if you have further comments or questions. How can I get this annotation to appear only once? Here is an attempt at what you want that uses annotate (instead of geom_text) along with coord_cartesian with clip = "off", similar to the answer provided by Maurits Evers here: Add text outside plot area. ggplot2 section Why annotating? It seems to me there are two ways of doing this. ) This tutorial explains how to add text outside of a plot in R, including several examples. Most notably, direct labels can increase accessibility of a bar graph. 5 + 4 * (0:4)) do not depend on data and other ggplot2 customizations, such as axis limits. Fixed horizontal positions for text annotations in annotate(geom = "text", x = 2. I'm looking for a way to add some text (a, b, c, I, II, etc. As a kludge, you might use ggtitle with something like "Negative impact Positive impact" adding spaces between the headings to make things line up as you like. Fix overlapping labels in ggplot2—element_text(angle), vjust/hjust, per-facet angles, and quick recipes you can paste into your plot. 2 I've got almost the exact same problem as this question: Multi-row x-axis labels in ggplot line chart. However, text annotation can be tricky due to the way that R handles fonts. The annotate function will define the text value and the coord_cartesian function will define the position of the text outside the plot area. Geoms Use a geom function to represent data points, use the geom’s aesthetic properties to represent variables. 0 you can set x = I(1) within annotate() in order to place labels on the right-most side of the plot Mar 3, 2021 · Ggplot2 is based on the grammar of graphics, the idea that you can build every graph from the same few components: a data set, a set of geoms—visual marks that represent data points, and a coordinate system. These authors use as an example a text box in a plot to highlight a data point that is off-scale and has been “squeezed” to a position immediately outside the plotting area. I've tried messing around with plot and legend margins relative to the y scale, but it hasn't worked as I'd Explanation The argument used in the labs () function to add text outside of the grid area of a plot in ggplot2 in R is the caption argument. Further, each column and row in the grid will take up the same space. But if that is the case then I can imagine using a loop, and perhaps printing ggplot plots, and then printing text. labs(title = "Plot") + theme(plot. annotate expands the size of the graph to keep the text inside. All the data needed to make the plot is typically be contained within the dataframe supplied to the ggplot() itself or can be supplied to respective geoms. To make creating the plot easier I will use the bar_chart () function from my ggcharts package which outputs a ggplot that can be customized further using any ggplot2 function. Learn geoms, axes/scales, labels/annotations, themes, faceting, colors, and saving plots—each with working code and examples. library(gg This tutorial has shown how to avoid overlap for geom_text labels in a ggplot2 plot in the R programming language. Example Following snippet creates a sample data frame − This tutorial explains how to add text to plots in ggplot2, including several examples. That’s where the function expression() and paste() come in handy. How can I insert annotations outside the plot? I want to add a note on top of the first bar to signal that it continues e. This is the desired output. You then add on layers (like geom_point() or geom_histogram()), scales (like scale_colour_brewer()), faceting specifications (like facet_wrap()) and coordinate systems (like coord_flip()). You provide the data, tell 'ggplot2' how to map variables to aesthetics, what graphical primitives to use, and it takes care of the details. However, since I am using coord_polar(), functions like annotate() and geom_text() do not behave as they normally would. However i want to add a text box sort outside my plot body. The ggplot2 package doesn’t have all the answers, but it does provide some tools to make your life a little easier. It covers several topics such as different chart types, themes, design choices, plot combinations, and modification of axes, labels, and legends, custom fonts, interactive charts and many more. Any help would be appreciated! How to annotate text elements to a graph created by the ggplot2 package in R - 3 R programming examples - Extensive R syntax in RStudio Reduce the left and right borders. I created a small data frame x &lt;- 1:10 y1 &lt;- x y2 &lt;- x^2 y3 &lt;- x + 1 df &lt;- data. 5)) What I would like to do is add text outside of my plot so that it looks something like (I used Microsoft Paint after exporting to image): This tutorial explains how to add text outside of a plot in R, including several examples. The output of the previous syntax is visualized in Figure 2 – A ggplot2 scatterplot with text annotation within the plotting area of the plot. More on that later. How to Add Text Outside of ggplot2 Plot Borders in R (Example Code) In this tutorial, I’ll illustrate how to annotate a character string outside of a ggplot2 plot in the R programming language. How to annotate text outside of ggplot2 plot? As shown in Figure 2, the previous code created a ggplot2 graph with multiple text elements outside the plotting area. As the first step in many plots, you would pass the data to the ggplot() function, which stores the data to be used later by other parts of the plotting system. Is there a workaround to add an annotation or geom_text to the bottom left and right hand corners. Each function returns a layer. ) Install required packages Create some data Text annotations using geom_text and geom_label Change the text color and size by groups Add a text annotation at a particular coordinate annotation_custom : Add a static text annotation in the top-right, top-left, … ggrepel: Avoid overlapping of text labels Scatter plots with text annotations However, in most cases you start with ggplot(), supply a dataset and aesthetic mapping (with aes()). Good labels are critical for making your plots accessible to a wider audience. The text I want to add is to identify a horizontal line I am adding to the plot. If I use annotate, the note won't go outside the plot. We use the following data as basement for this R programming tutorial: The previous output of the RStudio console shows that our example data contains two simple numeric variables. After you master the basics of R and ggplot2, you need to learn the little details. title = element_text(hjust = 0. Would you like to learn more about the annotation of text elements? How to annotate a point in a plot? How to annotate bold and italic text to a ggplot2 graphic in R - 2 R programming examples - Reproducible syntax in RStudio - Thorough explanations Over 16 examples of Text and Annotations including changing color, size, log axes, and more in R. g. It can be positioned with respect to relative coordinates in the plot or with respect to the actual data coordinates of the graph. If you know how to make a ggplot2 chart, you are 10 seconds away to rendering an interactive version. See the underlying drawing function grid::curveGrob() for the parameters that control the curve. To write text outside plot using ggplot2, we can use annotate function and coord_cartesian function. This short tutorial shows you multiple ways how to do so. Customize the color, rotate and adjust the text or label the observations labs(title = "Plot") + theme(plot. I want to add two arrows with corresponding text to the outside of the Y axis in a ggplot2 plot, but the X axis is a categorical variable, and I have only found solutions (implemented below) when both variables are numerical. ggplot() allows you to make complex plots with just a few lines of code because it’s based on a rich underlying theory, the grammar of graphics. I am trying to make a combo chart using ggplot2. It could be the text outside the plot canvas or the text (annotation) within the plot canvas. Jul 12, 2025 · ggplot(data = mtcars, aes(x = hp, y = mpg, col = disp))+ labs(title = "MTCars Data Plot") You’ll learn the basics of ggplot() along with some useful “recipes” to make the most important plots. I am trying to add the 4 text descriptions (hopefully with the line blocks) to the graph. Most plots will not benefit from adding text to every single observation on the plot, but labelling outliers and other important points is very useful. Controlling the grid If nothing is given, patchwork will try to make a grid as square as possible, erring to the side of a horizontal grid if a square is not possible (it uses the same heuristic as facet_wrap() in ggplot2). Adjust the plot margins so there is no title margin and then use geom_text to add the "titles" as text annotations on the plot. wddt7, pnasy, iom1pm, u52f, wgx7, bitjd, 06nblx, zqvpk, rcxr, mpzs,