Rotating and spacing axis labels in ggplot2

Question

I have a plot where the x-axis is a factor whose labels are long. While probably not an ideal visualization, for now, I'd like to simply rotate these labels to be vertical. I've figured this part out with the code below, but as you can see, the labels aren't totally visible.

data(diamonds)

diamonds$cut <- paste("Super Dee-Duper",as.character(diamonds$cut))

q <- qplot(cut,carat,data=diamonds,geom="boxplot")

q + opts(axis.text.x=theme_text(angle=-90))

Answer 1

By default, the text is aligned at the center of the axis. To rotate axis labels to vertical, use the following code:

theme(axis.text.x = element_text(angle = 90, hjust = 1)

where angle rotates the text, and hjust controls horizontal justification.

In your case: