Question

Problem: When using scale_y_continuous() the Y axis label is removed.

Example:

dat <- data.frame(variable = c("A","B","C"),
value = c(0.5,0.25,0.25)
)

ggplot(dat, aes(variable, value)) +
geom_bar() +
scale_y_continuous("", formatter="percent") + 
labs(y="Proportion",x="Type")

Is there a way to force the label to show when using scale_y_continuous()?

Answer 1

Yes. It seems to me that the label disappears because you told it to be a blank string, and the later call to labs(y=...) doesn’t override this. Both of the following alternative formulations work:

Option 1 is to not use scale_y_continuous(formatter=...), i.e. don’t provide any label text.

ggplot(dat, aes(variable, value)) +
    geom_bar() +
    scale_y_continuous(formatter="percent") + 
    labs(y="Proportion", x="Type")

Option 2 is to specify the label text in the the call to scale directly, i.e. scale_y_continuous("Proportion", ...):

ggplot(dat, aes(variable, value)) +
    geom_bar() +
    scale_y_continuous("Proportion", formatter="percent") + 
    labs(x="Type")