Shrink y axis title margins about cowplot

[clauswilke]

Please make up a simplified example of the issue and post reproducible code for it. Thanks!

[ashenkin]

Thanks for your attention, Claus.

library(ggplot2)
library(cowplot)
plots = list()
for (plotnum in 1:30) {
    tempdf = data.frame(xtemp = rnorm(20), ytemp = rnorm(20))
    plots[[plotnum]] = ggplot(tempdf, aes(x=xtemp, y=ytemp)) + geom_point() + ylab(paste("Plot",plotnum)) + theme_bw() + 
        theme(axis.title.x = element_blank(), axis.text.x = element_blank(), axis.title.y = element_text(size = 6))
}

tempplot = do.call("plot_grid", c(plots, ncol=3, align = "hv"))
ggsave("example.pdf", tempplot, height = 9, width = 6.5, units = "in")

example.pdf

[clauswilke]

You can eliminate the margins from the y-axis title via:

axis.title.y = element_text(size = 6, margin = margin(t = 0, r = 0, b = 0, l = 0, unit = "pt"))

This moves the titles as close to the axis-tick labels as possible, see e.g. Plot 4:

example.pdf

Of course there's still a distance in the other plots, since the y-axis titles are all aligned. I think you would want them to be.