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I am looking for a way to add line breaks to my x-axis labels as currently they are too long. enter image description here

Here is my code for one of several plots:

PortR_plot = ggplot(data=PortR, mapping = aes(x=Energy.Type, y=Scaled.Score, fill=Energy.Type)) 
  + labs(title="Portfolio R", x=('Energy Type'), y=('Scaled Score'))

PortR_plot + geom_boxplot()+ scale_x_discrete(limits=c('Battery storage',
  'Geothermal', 'Onshore Wind','Pumped Storage', 'Run of River Hydro', 'Small Storage Hydro','Solar')) 
  + ylim(0,1)+ theme(text = element_text(size = 20))

I know that you can add breaks (\n) with scale_x_discrete but I am already using scale_x_discrete to display empty energy types that are not in the original dataset (PortR), and so when I add a line break there, for example:

scale_x_discrete(limits=c('Battery \n storage','Geothermal', etc etc

it doesn't work because then it does not match the name of the energy type in the dataset.

I have tried the method from this blog but it didn't result in any noticeable changes.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Edit: Adding sample of data

structure(list(Project = c("Batt_1", "Wind_2", "Wind_3", "Wind_4", 
"Wind_5", "Wind_6", "Wind_7", "Wind_8", "Wind_9", "Hydro_1", 
"Hydro_2", "Hydro_3"), Energy.Type = c("Battery storage", 
"Onshore Wind", "Onshore Wind", "Onshore Wind", "Onshore Wind", 
"Onshore Wind", "Onshore Wind", "Onshore Wind", "Onshore Wind", 
"Small Storage Hydro", "Small Storage Hydro", "Small Storage Hydro"
), Scaled..T.FW. = c(0, 1.29, 1.19, 0.69, 1.14, 0.11, 0.9, 0.52, 
1.02, 0.85, 0.83, 0.31)), row.names = c(NA, -12L), class = "data.frame")

Edit2: I think I may have forced a solution by adding a break (alt+enter) in excel before importing into R. Still would be interested to know the solution in R.

Edit3: I tried doing what Ronak showed but when I try to add additional energy types on the x-axis via scale_x_discrete(limits) I get a blank plot.

Kevin Yang
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    as an alternative you could make the plot wider (by changing the width of your output format) or switch the x/y axis with `coord_flip()` – user20650 Jun 30 '21 at 00:29
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    there is also this : https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21878974/wrap-long-axis-labels-via-labeller-label-wrap-in-ggplot2 – user20650 Jun 30 '21 at 00:30

1 Answers1

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You can use stringr::str_wrap which will wrap the x-axis text. You may change the width parameter of str_wrap as per your choice.

library(ggplot2)

ggplot(df, aes(x = stringr::str_wrap(Energy.Type, 10), 
               y=Scaled..T.FW., fill=Energy.Type)) +
  geom_boxplot() + 
 labs(title="All Projects", x= 'Energy Type', y= 'Scaled Score')

enter image description here

Ronak Shah
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  • Thank you so much! This seems to work well with just plotting the data by itself. However when I try to add additional energy types on the x-axis via scale_x_discrete(limits I get a blank plot. – Kevin Yang Jun 30 '21 at 04:48
  • I think that is because the x axis values has changed when we use `stringr::str_wrap(Energy.Type, 10)` and your values should match with the text from `str_wrap` instead. – Ronak Shah Jun 30 '21 at 05:47