Adding a suffix that includes superscript text to axis text in ggplot

Question

I want to have my x-axis show the scale with an added "m²" at the end of each axis text using the scales::label_number() function. Reproducible code:

tibble(x = 1:10, y = 1:10) |> 
ggplot(aes(x, y)) + 
scale_x_continuous(label = scales::label_number(suffix = "m^2"))

which gives me "5m^2" (for example) on the x-axis, whereas I want it to show "5m²". It seems the usual suspects of bquote() and expression() do not work with the scales::label_number() function.

Peter · Accepted Answer · 2022-05-16 07:05:59Z

3

Use unicode for ^2: "m\u00B2" or m^2: "\u33A1"

library(tibble)
library(ggplot2)

tibble(x = 1:10, y = 1:10) |>  
  ggplot(aes(x, y)) +  
  scale_x_continuous(label = scales::label_number(suffix = "m\u00B2"))

^{Created on 2022-05-16 by the reprex package (v2.0.1)}

edited May 16, 2022 at 7:05

answered May 16, 2022 at 6:37

Peter

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1 Comment

Freddie J. Heather Over a year ago

I did not realise the ^2 was part of unicode :) Thank you

stefan · Accepted Answer · 2022-05-16 06:35:24Z

2

Using scales::label_parse you could do:

library(ggplot2)

data.frame(x = 1:10, y = 1:10) |>
  ggplot(aes(x, y)) +
  scale_x_continuous(
    label = ~ scales::label_parse()(
      paste0(scales::label_number()(.x), "*m^2"))
  )

answered May 16, 2022 at 6:35

stefan

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2 Comments

Freddie J. Heather Over a year ago

Thank you very much! The above code seems to fail when the x-axis values are above 1000. This is because label_number() puts a gap between the "1" and "000". I found replacing the paste0(scales::label_number()(.x), "*m^2") with paste0(.x, "*m^2") overcomes this issue.

stefan Over a year ago

@FreddieJ.Heather. The code does not fail. label_number uses a space as grouping mark. And as you desired label_number ... (;

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