How to Avoid Overlapping Labels in ggplot2 in R?
Last Updated :
18 Oct, 2021
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In this article, we are going to see how to avoid overlapping labels in ggplot2 in R Programming Language.
To avoid overlapping labels in ggplot2, we use guide_axis() within scale_x_discrete().
Syntax: plot+scale_x_discrete(guide = guide_axis(<type>))
In the place of we can use the following properties:
- n.dodge: It makes overlapping labels shift a step-down.
- check.overlap: This removes the overlapping labels and displays only those which do not overlap
Creating the basic barplot with overlapping labels
# Create sample data
set.seed(5642)
sample_data <- data.frame(name = c("Geeksforgeeks1",
"Geeksforgeeks2",
"Geeksforgeeks3",
"Geeksforgeeks4",
"Geeeksforgeeks5") ,
value = c(31,12,15,28,45))
# Load ggplot2 package
library("ggplot2")
# Create bar plot
plot<-ggplot(sample_data, aes(name,value, fill=name)) +
geom_bar(stat = "identity")
plot
Output:
Avoid overlapping labels
To avoid overlapping by shifting labels downward we use n.dodge parameter of guide_axis() function:
# Create sample data
set.seed(5642)
sample_data <- data.frame(name = c("Geeksforgeeks1",
"Geeksforgeeks2",
"Geeksforgeeks3",
"Geeksforgeeks4",
"Geeeksforgeeks5") ,
value = c(31,12,15,28,45))
# Load ggplot2 package
library("ggplot2")
# Create bar plot without overlapping labels
plot<-ggplot(sample_data, aes(name,value, fill=name)) +
geom_bar(stat = "identity") +
scale_x_discrete(guide = guide_axis(n.dodge=2))
plot
Output:
Remove overlapping
To remove overlapping labels we use check.overlap parameter of guide_axis() function:
# Create sample data
set.seed(5642)
sample_data <- data.frame(name = c("Geeksforgeeks1",
"Geeksforgeeks2",
"Geeksforgeeks3",
"Geeksforgeeks4",
"Geeeksforgeeks5") ,
value = c(31,12,15,28,45))
# Load ggplot2 package
library("ggplot2")
# Create bar plot without overlapping labels
plot<-ggplot(sample_data, aes(name,value, fill=name)) +
geom_bar(stat = "identity") +
scale_x_discrete(guide = guide_axis(check.overlap = TRUE))
plot
Output:
