R: ggplot2, can I set the plot title to wrap around and shrink the text to fit the plot?

Question

library(ggplot2)  my_title = "This is a really long title of a plot that I want to nicely wrap \n and fit onto the plot without having to manually add the backslash n, but at the moment it does not"  r <- ggplot(data = cars, aes(x = speed, y = dist)) r + geom_smooth() + #(left)  opts(title = my_title) 

can I set the plot title to wrap around and shrink the text to fit the plot?

Answer 1

You have to manually choose the number of characters to wrap at, but the combination of strwrap and paste will do what you want.

wrapper <- function(x, ...)  {   paste(strwrap(x, ...), collapse = "\n") }  my_title <- "This is a really long title of a plot that I want to nicely wrap and fit onto the plot without having to manually add the backslash n, but at the moment it does not" r +    geom_smooth() +    ggtitle(wrapper(my_title, width = 20)) 

Answer 2

Just for an update as has been mentioned in the comments opts is deprecated. You need to use labs and you could do:

library(ggplot2)  my_title = "This is a really long title of a plot that I want to nicely wrap \n and fit onto the plot without having to manually add the backslash n, but at the moment it does not" 

Option 1: Using str_wrap option from the stringr package and setting your ideal width:

 library(stringr)  ggplot(data = cars, aes(x = speed, y = dist)) +       geom_smooth() +       labs(title = str_wrap(my_title, 60)) 

Option 2: Using the function provided by @Richie https://stackoverflow.com/a/3935429/4767610 like this:

wrapper <- function(x, ...)  {   paste(strwrap(x, ...), collapse = "\n") } ggplot(data = cars, aes(x = speed, y = dist)) +       geom_smooth() +       labs(title = wrapper(my_title, 60)) 

Option 3: Using the manual option (granted, this is what the OP wanted to avoid but it might be handy)

my_title_manual = "This is a really long title of a plot that I want to nicely wrap \n and fit onto the plot without having to manually add \n the backslash n, but at the moment it does not"   ggplot(data = cars, aes(x = speed, y = dist)) +           geom_smooth() +           labs(title = my_title_manual) 

Option 4: Reduce the text size of the title (as in the accepted answer https://stackoverflow.com/a/2633773/4767610)

ggplot(data = cars, aes(x = speed, y = dist)) +   geom_smooth() +   labs(title = my_title) +   theme(plot.title = element_text(size = 10))