Adding line breaks between words to axis labels in ggplot

Question

I am looking for a way to add line breaks to my x-axis labels as currently they are too long. enter image description here

Here is my code for one of several plots:

PortR_plot = ggplot(data=PortR, mapping = aes(x=Energy.Type, y=Scaled.Score, fill=Energy.Type)) 
 + labs(title="Portfolio R", x=('Energy Type'), y=('Scaled Score'))
PortR_plot + geom_boxplot()+ scale_x_discrete(limits=c('Battery storage',
 'Geothermal', 'Onshore Wind','Pumped Storage', 'Run of River Hydro', 'Small Storage Hydro','Solar')) 
 + ylim(0,1)+ theme(text = element_text(size = 20))

I know that you can add breaks (\n) with scale_x_discrete but I am already using scale_x_discrete to display empty energy types that are not in the original dataset (PortR), and so when I add a line break there, for example:

scale_x_discrete(limits=c('Battery \n storage','Geothermal', etc etc

it doesn't work because then it does not match the name of the energy type in the dataset.

I have tried the method from this blog but it didn't result in any noticeable changes.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Edit: Adding sample of data

structure(list(Project = c("Batt_1", "Wind_2", "Wind_3", "Wind_4", 
"Wind_5", "Wind_6", "Wind_7", "Wind_8", "Wind_9", "Hydro_1", 
"Hydro_2", "Hydro_3"), Energy.Type = c("Battery storage", 
"Onshore Wind", "Onshore Wind", "Onshore Wind", "Onshore Wind", 
"Onshore Wind", "Onshore Wind", "Onshore Wind", "Onshore Wind", 
"Small Storage Hydro", "Small Storage Hydro", "Small Storage Hydro"
), Scaled..T.FW. = c(0, 1.29, 1.19, 0.69, 1.14, 0.11, 0.9, 0.52, 
1.02, 0.85, 0.83, 0.31)), row.names = c(NA, -12L), class = "data.frame")

Edit2: I think I may have forced a solution by adding a break (alt+enter) in excel before importing into R. Still would be interested to know the solution in R.

Edit3: I tried doing what Ronak showed but when I try to add additional energy types on the x-axis via scale_x_discrete(limits) I get a blank plot.

• user20650: as an alternative you could make the plot wider (by changing the width of your output format) or switch the x/y axis with coord_flip()
• user20650: there is also this : stackoverflow.com/questions/21878974/…

Answer 1

You can use stringr::str_wrap which will wrap the x-axis text. You may change the width parameter of str_wrap as per your choice.

library(ggplot2)
ggplot(df, aes(x = stringr::str_wrap(Energy.Type, 10), 
 y=Scaled..T.FW., fill=Energy.Type)) +
 geom_boxplot() + 
 labs(title="All Projects", x= 'Energy Type', y= 'Scaled Score')

enter image description here

• Kevin Yang: Thank you so much! This seems to work well with just plotting the data by itself. However when I try to add additional energy types on the x-axis via scale_x_discrete(limits I get a blank plot.
• Ronak Shah: I think that is because the x axis values has changed when we use stringr::str_wrap(Energy.Type, 10) and your values should match with the text from str_wrap instead.