Increase distance between text and title on the y-axis

From ggplot2 2.0.0 you can use the margin = argument of element_text() to change the distance between the axis title and the numbers. Set the values of the margin on top, right, bottom, and left side of the element.

ggplot(mpg, aes(cty, hwy)) + geom_point()+
  theme(axis.title.y = element_text(margin = margin(t = 0, r = 20, b = 0, l = 0)))

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margin can also be used for other element_text elements (see ?theme), such as axis.text.x, axis.text.y and title.

addition

in order to set the margin for axis titles when the axis has a different position (e.g., with scale_x_...(position = "top"), you'll need a different theme setting - e.g. axis.title.x.top. See https://github.com/tidyverse/ggplot2/issues/4343.

Based on this forum post: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/ggplot2/mK9DR3dKIBU

Sounds like the easiest thing to do is to add a line break (\n) before your x axis, and after your y axis labels. Seems a lot easier (although dumber) than the solutions posted above.

ggplot(mpg, aes(cty, hwy)) + 
    geom_point() + 
    xlab("\nYour_x_Label") + ylab("Your_y_Label\n")

Hope that helps!

A solution that offers more fine-grained control than \n but is less cumbersome than adding margins is to use vjust in the theme function.

For adjusting the position on the y-axis or (x-axis) to add space, this often requires using a positive value for vjust (y-axis) or a negative value for vjust (x-axis) as in theme(axis.title.y = element_text(vjust = 2)). See a fully worked example below.

# load patchwork to show plots side-by-side
library(patchwork)
library(ggplot2)

# Plot A: just for comparison, moving titles *inward*
p1 <- ggplot(mpg, aes(cty, hwy)) + 
  geom_point() + 
  theme_gray() +
  theme(
    axis.title.y = element_text(vjust = -3),
    axis.title.x = element_text(vjust = +3)
  ) 

# Plot B: what we want, moving titles *outward*
p2 <- ggplot(mpg, aes(cty, hwy)) + 
  geom_point() + 
  theme_gray() +
  theme(
    axis.title.y = element_text(vjust = +3),
    axis.title.x = element_text(vjust = -0.75)
  ) 

# show plots side-by-side with patchwork package
p1 + p2 +
  plot_annotation(tag_levels = "A")