Add text with multiple line breaks and italic words to a plot in R

Question

I want to add several lines of text to a plot, in which some words are in italics. This is what the text should look like:

Italic Text: Some
words with
new lines.

More italic text: Yet
more words divided
by new lines.

Italics again: And more
text with
new lines.

The following code prints a single line of text with italic words:

plot(c(0, 2), c(0, 2))
text(1, 1, bquote(
        paste(
            italic("Italic Text:"),
            " Some words with new lines. ",
            italic("More italic text:"),
            "Yet more words divided by new lines. ",
            italic("Italics again:"),
            "And more text with new lines.",
            sep = ""
        )
    )
)

And this creates line breaks, but no italics:

plot(c(0, 2), c(0, 2))
text(1, 1, "Italic Text: Some\nwords with\nnew lines.\n\nMore italic text: Yet\nmore words divided\nby new lines.\n\nItalics again: And more\ntext with\nnew lines.")

But when I try to break the text into lines and add italics, the newline characters lead to strange results:

plot(c(0, 2), c(0, 2))
text(1, 1, bquote(
        paste(
            italic("Italic Text:"),
            " Some\nwords with\nnew lines.\n\n",
            italic("More italic text:"),
            "Yet\nmore words divided\nby new lines.\n\n",
            italic("Italics again:"),
            "And more\ntext with\nnew lines.",
            sep = ""
        )
    )
)

atop(), as suggested in other answers, only works with two lines.

What's the easiest method to add multiple lines of text with several words in italics to a plot?

Ideally, using only base R.
And without painfully positioning each line of text separately.

jay.sf · Answer 1 · 2019-02-17T15:31:19.290

3

We can use substitute() to combine italic and normal text. To left align the text we can use option pos=4. then we can we can fiddle it together like this.

plot(c(0, 2), c(0, 2))
text(1, 1.9, substitute(paste(italic("Italic:"), " Some")), pos=4)
text(1, 1.7, "words with\nnew lines.", pos=4)
text(1., 1.4, substitute(paste(italic("More italic text:"), " Yet")), pos=4)
text(1, 1.21, "words with\nnew lines.", pos=4)
text(1., .9, substitute(paste(italic("Italics again:"), " And more")), pos=4)
text(1, .71, "text with\nnew lines.", pos=4)

Note: It shifts a little bit while exporting. I've exported the figure with 500x500 resolution.

edited Feb 17 '19 at 15:31

answered Feb 17 '19 at 15:26

jay.sf

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Thank you, but that's the kind of fiddling I want to avoid. I'd like to place a *block of text* of multiple lines, as can be easily done with `text(x, y, "Text\nwith\nline\nbreaks.")`. – Feb 18 '19 at 05:08

tchevrier · Answer 2 · 2019-10-10T17:58:21.577

How about this?

plot(c(0, 10), c(0, 10))
text(
  5,
  7:2,
  c(
    expression(paste(italic("Italic Text:"), " Some")),
    "\nwords with\nnew lines.",
    expression(paste(italic("More italic text:"), " Yet")),
    "\nmore words divided\nby new lines.",
    expression(paste(italic("Italics again:"), "And more")),
    "\ntext with\nnew lines."
  )
)

i think what is happening is what is mentioned in the vignette for text.

If labels is longer than x and y, the coordinates are recycled to the length of labels

That could be the reason why you are getting your weird layout. If you change my 7:2 code inside text, I also get your "messed up" layout. Only the center paragraph looks still "off" - and I am really not sure why... It looks the same as the other 2 :-s. The rest looks spot on what you are looking for, I take it? In any case, looks exactly like your second picture, which I used as my reference point...

I just fondled some more with this.. if you want left-justified, just add pos = 4 inside the text function.

From here on, you should be able to get precisely what you want. Hope this helps!

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 27 '19 at 02:11

I don't know the italic job...but that package I wrote could help you:

devtools::install_github("igorkf/breaker")
library(breaker)

nbreak("Some text that you want and the italic stuff", n = 3)
#[1] "Some text that\nyou want and\nthe italic stuff"

#You can also use this with purrr:
purrr::map_chr(list("the first text that you want",
                    "the second text that you want",
                    "the third text that you want"),
                  ~nbreak(.x, n = 2))
#[1] "the first\ntext that\nyou want"  "the second\ntext that\nyou want" "the third\ntext that\nyou want"

You can also only break a once using loop = F

Add text with multiple line breaks and italic words to a plot in R

3 Answers3