[R] Placing axes label strings closer to the graph?

[Prof Brian Ripley]

Use mtext() to put labels in the margin line you want.  title() writes 
xlab and ylab in line 3 AFAIR.  So you could use something like

par(mai=c(0.6,0.6,0.2,0.2))
plot(D$dates, D$inflation,
      type="l", lwd=2, col="cadetblue4", cex.axis=0.6)
mtext("X label string", 1, line=2, cex = 0.6)
mtext("Y label string", 2, line=2, cex = 0.6)

*However*, your error is to use cex to change the font size, not pointsize 
(which scales the lines suitably). Try instead

pdf(file="inflation.pdf", width=2.8, height=2.8, pointsize=6)
plot(D$dates, D$inflation, xlab="X label string", ylab="Y label string",
      type="l", lwd=2, col="cadetblue4")

On Sat, 1 Oct 2005, Ajay Narottam Shah wrote:

> Folks,
>
> I have placed an example of a self-contained R program later in this
> mail. It generates a file inflation.pdf. When I stare at the picture,
> I see the "X label string" and "Y label string" sitting lonely and far
> away from the axes. How can these distances be adjusted? I read ?par
> and didn't find this directly.
>
> I want to hang on to 2.8 x 2.8 inches as the overall size of graph,
> but it will be nice if the inner square frame was bigger and thus the
> axes were closer to the strings. I will be happy with (say)
> par(mai=c(.6,.6,.2,.2)). But if I just do this, the "X label string"
> and "Y label string" were lost.
>
> Thanks,
>
>        -ans.
>
> D <- structure(list(dates = c(1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988,
>                      1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996,
>                      1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004,
>                      2005), inflation = c(7.6, 12.1, 6.3, 6.8, 8.7,
>                               8.8, 9.4, 6.1, 11.6, 13.5, 9.6, 7.5, 10.1, 10.2,
>                               9.3, 7, 13.1, 3.4, 3.7, 4.3, 4.1, 3.7, 4)),
>               .Names = c("dates", "inflation"), row.names =
>               c("1", "2", "3", "4", "5", "6", "7", "8", "9",
>                 "10", "11", "12", "13", "14", "15", "16", "17",
>                 "18", "19", "20", "21", "22", "23"), class =
>               "data.frame")
>
> pdf(file="inflation.pdf", width=2.8, height=2.8, bg="cadetblue1")
> par(mai=c(0.8,0.8,0.2,0.2))
> plot(D$dates, D$inflation, xlab="X label string", ylab="Y label string",
>     type="l", lwd=2, col="cadetblue4", cex.axis=0.6, cex.lab=0.6)
>
> -- 
> Ajay Shah                                                   Consultant
> ajayshah at mayin.org                      Department of Economic Affairs
> http://www.mayin.org/ajayshah           Ministry of Finance, New Delhi
>
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-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595