Question

You can see examples in this page.

Notice that in theme_wsj example, xlab and ylab do not appear.

Here’s a non-ggthemes plot that includes labels:

ggplot(mtcars, aes(factor(cyl), mpg)) +
geom_point() +
xlab("Hello World: X axis") +
ylab("Hello World: Y axis")

But, when you add the theme_wsj theme, they disappear:

ggplot(mtcars, aes(factor(cyl), mpg)) +
geom_point() +
xlab("Hello World: X axis") +
ylab("Hello World: Y axis") +
theme_wsj()

Answer 1

If you look on source code of theme_wsj() you can see that axis titles are set as blank

theme_wsj<-function(base_size=12, color="brown", base_family="sans", title_family="Courier") {
    colorhex <- ggthemes_data$wsj$bg[color]
    (theme_foundation()
     + theme(
.....
      axis.title=element_blank()
....

So one solution to get xlab and ylab to be shown is to add new theme element

+theme_wsj()+theme(axis.title=element_text(size=12))