[r] How to change the font size and color of x-axis and y-axis label in a scatterplot with plot function in R?

I used the following code to draw a scatterplot. How to increase the font size and change colour of x-axis and y-axis label?

data=read.csv("data.csv") 
plot(data$column1,data$column2,xlab="x axis", ylab="y axis",  pch=19)

This question is related to r scatter-plot

The answer is


Look at ?par for the various graphics parameters.

In general cex controls size, col controls colour. If you want to control the colour of a label, the par is col.lab, the colour of the axis annotations col.axis, the colour of the main text, col.main etc. The names are quite intuitive, once you know where to begin.

For example

x <- 1:10
y <- 1:10

plot(x , y,xlab="x axis", ylab="y axis",  pch=19, col.axis = 'blue', col.lab = 'red', cex.axis = 1.5, cex.lab = 2)

enter image description here

If you need to change the colour / style of the surrounding box and axis lines, then look at ?axis or ?box, and you will find that you will be using the same parameter names within calls to box and axis.

You have a lot of control to make things however you wish.

eg

plot(x , y,xlab="x axis", ylab="y axis",  pch=19,  cex.lab = 2, axes = F,col.lab = 'red')
box(col = 'lightblue')
axis(1, col = 'blue', col.axis = 'purple', col.ticks = 'darkred', cex.axis = 1.5, font = 2, family = 'serif')
axis(2, col = 'maroon', col.axis = 'pink', col.ticks = 'limegreen', cex.axis = 0.9, font =3, family = 'mono')

enter image description here

Which is seriously ugly, but shows part of what you can control


Taking DWins example.

What I often do, particularly when I use many, many different plots with the same colours or size information, is I store them in variables I otherwise never use. This helps me keep my code a little cleaner AND I can change it "globally".

E.g.

clab = 1.5
cmain = 2
caxis = 1.2

plot(1, 1 ,xlab="x axis", ylab="y axis",  pch=19,
           col.lab="red", cex.lab=clab,    
           col="green", main = "Testing scatterplots", cex.main =cmain, cex.axis=caxis) 

You can also write a function, doing something similar. But for a quick shot this is ideal. You can also store that kind of information in an extra script, so you don't have a messy plot script:

which you then call with setwd("") source("plotcolours.r")

in a file say called plotcolours.r you then store all the e.g. colour or size variables

clab = 1.5
cmain = 2
caxis = 1.2 

for colours could use

darkred<-rgb(113,28,47,maxColorValue=255)

as your variable 'darkred' now has the colour information stored, you can access it in your actual plotting script.

plot(1,1,col=darkred)