Customizing Line Width and Type

Introduction

R provides extensive options for customizing the appearance of plots, including adjusting the line width and line types. This tutorial will guide you through this process.

WEO USA data

We will use the same data frame as in the previous section.

# Load necessary libraries
library(ggplot2)
library(here)

weo_usa<-readRDS(here("databases/weo_usa.rds"))

We will start with a line chart of US unemployment starting in 1980.

# Using the same sample data as barplot
# Filter the data to include only years >= 1980
weo_usa <- subset(weo_usa, year >= 1980)

# Create a line chart
plot(weo_usa$year,weo_usa$lur, type = "l", main = "US: Unemployment", xlab = "", ylab = "Percent", col = "red")

Adjusting Line Width

The line width in R plots can be modified using the lwd parameter. It specifies the line width relative to the default, which is usually 1.

Here’s an example of how to adjust the line width:

# Using the same sample data as barplot
# Create a line chart
plot(weo_usa$year,weo_usa$lur, type = "l", main = "US: Unemployment", xlab = "", ylab = "Percent", col = "red", lwd=4)

Using Line Types

The line type can be specified using the lty parameter. R has several predefined line types:

  • lty = 1: Solid line
  • lty = 2: Dashed line
  • lty = 3: Dotted line
  • lty = 4: Dotdash line
  • lty = 5: Longdash line
  • lty = 6: Twodash line

Here’s an example how you can apply different line types to the unemployment data plot:

# Using the same sample data as barplot
# Create a line chart
plot(weo_usa$year,weo_usa$lur, type = "l", main = "US: Unemployment", xlab = "", ylab = "Percent", col = "red",lwd=2,lty=4)

Custom Line Types

Apart from the predefined line types, R allows for custom line types with a string of up to eight numbers, which represent the length of the line segments and gaps in the pattern. For example, lty = "42" will create a pattern with 4 units of line followed by 2 units of gap.

We will start with a line chart of US unemployment.

# Using the same sample data as barplot
# Create a line chart
plot(weo_usa$year,weo_usa$lur, type = "l", main = "US: Unemployment", xlab = "", ylab = "Percent", col = "red",lty=42,lwd=3)

Summary

In this tutorial, we’ve demonstrated how to customize line width and line types in R using a practical example of unemployment rates over the years. B