Question

I have the following plot in R:

x = c(0, 1e-10, 1e-08, 1e-06, 1e-05, 0.001, 0.1);
y = c(22000, 21490, 17252, 9204, 6118, 5092, 4998);
z = c(85.59, 85.59, 85.58, 85.49, 85.29, 85.29, 85.29);

x1 = c(0, 1e-10, 1e-08, 1e-06, 1e-05, 0.001, 0.1);
y2 = c(22000, 20039, 15185, 7705, 5436, 5223, 4933);
z2 = c(85.59, 85.59, 85.58, 85.53, 85.46, 85.49, 85.49);

y = y / 60;

y2 = y2 / 60;


x = log(x);

par("mar")
par(mar = c(par("mar")[1:3], 5.1))

plot(x,y, type="n", lwd=4, ylab="", xlab="threshold", xaxt="n",yaxt="n")

axis(1,lwd=4)
axis(2,lwd=4)

points(x, y, type = "l", lwd=4)

points(x, y, col="red", cex=2, pch=19)

points(x, y2, lwd=4, type="o", lty=2, col="black");

points(x, y2, col="red", cex=2, pch=19);

par("usr")
par(usr = c(par("usr")[1:2], 84,86))

axis(4, lwd=4)
points(x, z, type="l", lwd=4)

points(x, z, col="blue", cex=2, pch=15)

points(x, z2, type="l", col="black", lty=2, lwd=4)

points(x, z2, col="blue", cex=2, pch=15)


mtext("Measure1", side = 4, col = "blue",line=3)
mtext("Measure2", side = 2, col = "red",line=3)

It is almost perfect for me, but I just want to tweak it according to the following things:

1. The left y axis and the x axis – they are bolder, but for some reason, the bold part is not stretching all over the axes.

2. I want to make the font of the numbers and the labels a bit bigger, and maybe in bold font face.

3. I may even want to change the font to Times, but it sounds to me like a lot of hassle, from what I have seen online.

Thanks!

Answer 1

As mentionned by @thelatemail in the comment above, your first question can be answered by the function box:

box(lwd=4)

If you want only the sides with the axes to be bold, then you want to add a bty parameter:

box(lwd=4, bty="u") # For all the different kind of boxes see ?par.

To change the font and the size of the labels you have to use parameters font and cex.lab or cex.axis in your plot and axis statements:

axis(1, font=2, cex.axis=1.1) #font=2 correspond to bold face. See ?par for more information

And finaly for the font, you can use argument family, however it will work differently with all kinds of output device. You will find more information on that subject in section “Fonts” of ?x11 and in this answer.

axis(1, family="Times") #This will work with Cairo devices for example.

Here is your plot with cex.axis set up at 1.1, bold fonts and bold U-shaped box and in Times font: