Annotation label clipped in ggplot2

Question

I'm trying to avoid the bottom annotation being clipped. It's the descender on the "p" that gets chopped off. I've used the "inward" option on vjust.

df <- data.frame(x=c(as.Date("2020-01-01"),as.Date("2022-01-01"))
                     ,y=c(0,1))
df
ggplot(df) +
  geom_point(mapping=aes(x=x,y=y)) +
  annotate("text",x=mean(df$x),y=-Inf,label="Clipped",hjust=0.5,vjust="inward",size=12,colour="red") +
  annotate("text",x=mean(df$x),y=Inf,label="Not Clipped",hjust=0.5,vjust="inward",size=12,colour="blue")

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 02 '22 at 10:07

A possible approach would be to use the min and max y values:

library(tidyverse)

df <- data.frame(
  x = c(as.Date("2020-01-01"), as.Date("2022-01-01")),
  y = c(0, 1)
)

ggplot(df) +
  geom_point(aes(x, y)) +
  annotate("text", x = mean(df$x), y = min(df$y), label = "Clipped", hjust = 0.5, vjust = "inward", size = 12, colour = "red") +
  annotate("text", x = mean(df$x), y = max(df$y), label = "Not Clipped", hjust = 0.5, vjust = "inward", size = 12, colour = "blue")

^{Created on 2022-07-02 by the reprex package (v2.0.1)}

Thank you @Carl, that's probably what I'll go for. I'm surprised that ggplot2 doesn't handle this well by default but I guess there's a logic to it given the elegance of the package as a whole. — GeeGeePlottR, Jul 04 '22 at 08:21

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 02 '22 at 10:52

Interesting. Looks like this issue is related to what is chosen as the base line to align the text labels. This could be seen clearly when switching to geom_label where we see that for the clipped label the base line chosen for the alignment is not the end of the "p". Hence the "p"s get clipped off:

ggplot(df) +
  geom_point(mapping = aes(x = x, y = y)) +
  annotate("label", x = mean(df$x), y = -Inf, label = "Clipped", 
           hjust = 0.5, vjust = "inward", size = 12, colour = "red", label.padding = unit(0, "lines")) +
  annotate("label", x = mean(df$x), y = Inf, label = "Not Clipped", 
           hjust = 0.5, vjust = "inward", size = 12, colour = "blue", label.padding = unit(0, "lines"))

One possible fix would be to switch to ggtext::GeomRichtext:

library(ggplot2)
library(ggtext)

ggplot(df) +
  geom_point(mapping = aes(x = x, y = y)) +
  annotate(ggtext::GeomRichtext, x = mean(df$x), y = -Inf, label = "Clipped", 
           hjust = 0.5, vjust = "inward", size = 12, colour = "red", 
           label.size = 0, fill = NA, label.padding = unit(0, "lines")) +
  annotate(ggtext::GeomRichtext, x = mean(df$x), y = Inf, label = "Not Clipped", 
           hjust = 0.5, vjust = "inward", size = 12, colour = "blue", 
           label.size = 0, fill = NA, label.padding = unit(0, "lines"))

Thanks, @stefan I hadn't come across that package – GeeGeePlottR Jul 04 '22 at 08:19 — GeeGeePlottR, Jul 04 '22 at 08:19

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 02 '22 at 10:24

If you don't want it to be clipped on the same position, you can use coord_cartesian(clip = "off"):

df <- data.frame(x=c(as.Date("2020-01-01"),as.Date("2022-01-01"))
                 ,y=c(0,1))
library(ggplot2)
ggplot(df) +
  geom_point(mapping=aes(x=x,y=y)) +
  annotate("text",x=mean(df$x),y=-Inf,label="Clipped",hjust=0.5,vjust="inward",size=12,colour="red") +
  annotate("text",x=mean(df$x),y=Inf,label="Not Clipped",hjust=0.5,vjust="inward",size=12,colour="blue") +
  coord_cartesian(clip = 'off')

^{Created on 2022-07-02 by the reprex package (v2.0.1)}

Annotation label clipped in ggplot2

3 Answers3