R Ggplot2 Center Align a Multi-Line Title

R ggplot2 center align a multi-line title

would this work for you,

# install.packages("ggplot2", dependencies = TRUE)
require(ggplot2)

DF <- data.frame(x = rnorm(400))
m <- ggplot(DF, aes(x = x)) + geom_histogram()
m + labs(title = "Vehicle \n Weight-Gas \n Mileage Relationship \n 
                 and some really long so that you can seee it's centered") + 
     theme(plot.title = element_text(hjust = 0.5))

sorry about the typos in the plot title …

multi line and center align x axis labels using ggplot

You can use stringr::str_wrap as a labelling function in scale_x_discrete.

Let's take some sample data:

tab <- data.frame(Var1 = c("Video of presentation incl visuals",
                          "Video of presentation, written text and visuals",
                          "Written text, plus visuals",
                          "Other (please specify)"),
                 Percent = c(0.33, 0.34, 0.16, 0.17))

With your original function, this gives the following plot:

gg_fun()

But with the following modification:

gg_fun<-function(){
  ggplot(tab,                  
         aes(x = Var1, y = Percent)) +
    #theme_light() +
    theme(panel.background = element_rect(fill = NA),
          axis.title.y=element_text(angle=0, vjust=0.5, face="bold"), 
          axis.title.x=element_blank(),
          axis.text.y = element_text(size = 10), 
          axis.text.x = element_text(size = 12),
          axis.ticks.x = element_blank(),
          axis.ticks.y = element_blank(),
          #panel.grid.minor = element_line(colour = "dark gray"),
          panel.grid.major.x = element_blank() ,
          # explicitly set the horizontal lines (or they will disappear too)
          panel.grid.major.y = element_line(size=.1, color="dark gray" ),
          axis.line = element_line(size=.1, colour = "black"),
          plot.background = element_rect(colour = "black",size = 1)) +
    geom_bar(stat = "Identity", fill="#5596E6") + #"cornflower" blue
    ggtitle(element_blank()) + 
    scale_y_continuous(expand =  c(0, 0), 
                       breaks = round(seq(0, 1, by = .1), digits = 2), 
                       labels  = scales::percent(round(seq(0, 1, by = .1), 
                                                       digits = 2), digits = 0),
                       limits = c(0,.6)) +
    scale_x_discrete(labels = function(x) stringr::str_wrap(x, width = 16))
}

We get:

gg_fun()

Center Plot title in ggplot2

From the release news of ggplot 2.2.0: "The main plot title is now left-aligned to better work better with a subtitle". See also the plot.title argument in ?theme: "left-aligned by default".

As pointed out by @J_F, you may add theme(plot.title = element_text(hjust = 0.5)) to center the title.

ggplot() +
  ggtitle("Default in 2.2.0 is left-aligned")

ggplot() +
  ggtitle("Use theme(plot.title = element_text(hjust = 0.5)) to center") +
  theme(plot.title = element_text(hjust = 0.5))

Multi line title in ggplot 2 with multiple italicized words

Using a combination of atop, paste, italic and scriptstyle:

ggplot(mtcars, aes(x = wt, y = mpg)) +
  geom_point() +
  labs(title = ~ atop(paste('First line of title with ',italic("Species")),
                      paste(scriptstyle(italic("Species")),
                            scriptstyle(" secondline words "),
                            scriptstyle(italic("anotherSpecies")),
                            scriptstyle(" the end"))))

gives you the desired result:

Using scriptstyle is not a necessity, but imho it is nicer to have your subtitle in a smaller font than the main title.

See also ?plotmath for other usefull customizations.

Improve editing of multiline title in ggplot that uses \n and extends far to the right

Just use paste with sep = '\n'.

ggplot(DF, aes(x = x)) + geom_histogram() +
  ggtitle(paste("First line very long title ending with newline
          Second line also very long so it extends to the right out of RStudio pane
          Third line to emphasize how far you have to scroll right", sep='\n'))

How to align title and subtitle in ggplot2 when generated via expression

From the "it's stupid but it works" file, you can add spaces to the right of center to force left alignment. The right number of spaces could be determined using math, but I couldn't see how to pass a string variable back into atop.

# Chart
ggplot(data = mtcars) +
  geom_boxplot(aes(y = wt, x = as.factor(am)), fill = "gray87") +
  xlab("AM") + ylab("WT") + theme_gdocs() +
  ggtitle(expression(atop("WT by AM                            ", 
                          atop(italic("Some crucial note that has to be here"), "")))) +
  theme(axis.title.y = element_text(angle = 90),
        axis.ticks = element_line(colour = "black", linetype = "solid", size = 0.5),
        panel.grid = element_line(colour = "gray"))

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