Rotating and spacing axis labels in ggplot2

ggplot 3.3.0 fixes this by providing guide_axis(angle = 90) (as guide argument to scale_.. or as x argument to guides):

library(ggplot2)
data(diamonds)
diamonds$cut <- paste("Super Dee-Duper", as.character(diamonds$cut))

ggplot(diamonds, aes(cut, carat)) +
  geom_boxplot() +
  scale_x_discrete(guide = guide_axis(angle = 90)) +
  # ... or, equivalently:
  # guides(x =  guide_axis(angle = 90)) +
  NULL

From the documentation of the angle argument:

Compared to setting the angle in theme() / element_text(), this also uses some heuristics to automatically pick the hjust and vjust that you probably want.

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Alternatively, it also provides guide_axis(n.dodge = 2) (as guide argument to scale_.. or as x argument to guides) to overcome the over-plotting problem by dodging the labels vertically. It works quite well in this case:

library(ggplot2)
data(diamonds)
diamonds$cut <- paste("Super Dee-Duper",as.character(diamonds$cut))

ggplot(diamonds, aes(cut, carat)) + 
  geom_boxplot() +
  scale_x_discrete(guide = guide_axis(n.dodge = 2)) +
  NULL

Use coord_flip()

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

qplot(cut, carat, data = diamonds, geom = "boxplot") +
  coord_flip()

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Add str_wrap()

# wrap text to no more than 15 spaces
library(stringr)
diamonds$cut2 <- str_wrap(diamonds$cut, width = 15)
qplot(cut2, carat, data = diamonds, geom = "boxplot") +
  coord_flip()

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In Ch 3.9 of R for Data Science, Wickham and Grolemund speak to this exact question:

coord_flip() switches the x and y axes. This is useful (for example), if you want horizontal boxplots. It’s also useful for long labels: it’s hard to get them to fit without overlapping on the x-axis.

Change the last line to

q + theme(axis.text.x = element_text(angle = 90, vjust = 0.5, hjust=1))

By default, the axes are aligned at the center of the text, even when rotated. When you rotate +/- 90 degrees, you usually want it to be aligned at the edge instead:

The image above is from this blog post.