Removing top and right borders from boxplot frame in R

Question

Does anyone know how to remove the top and right borders of the boxplot frame in R? I have tried the argument frame=FALSE but that removes all sides but the left side(y-axis). I just want the x-axis and y-axis to display.

Thanks in advance!

Swollen

You could add the frame back in with box(bty="l") once you have used frame=FALSE – Christmastide

This is what I get when using bty command:Error in box(bty = "1") : invalid value specified for graphical parameter "bty" – Swollen

That's a lowercase L ("l") not a one ("1"). – Christmastide

Answer 1

I think you need to use axis(side=1) after plotting.

x <- 1:5
boxplot(x, frame.plot = FALSE)
axis(side = 1)

This gives

Hickson

This works, but the bottom border does not extend fully to the left. Also, I had specified xaxt="n" but the ticks come back with axis(side = 1). Any ideas how to remove the new ticks and extend bottom border to meet the y-axis? Thank you! – Swollen

Answer 2

1. Plot without axes

    boxplot(x, axes=F)

2. Add a box of type "l" (that's an L, not a 1), like thelatemail suggested

    box(bty="l")

3. Add axis ticks at desired values.

    axis(2)
    axis(1) #if you really want x-axis ticks here...

Crespo

Answer 3

To remove ticks, you need to specify the ticks line width as zero (lwd.ticks=0). To ensure the x and y axes meet is a bit more laborious, you need to

1. specify the lower limit of the y axis using ylim=...
2. specify the height of the x axis using pos=...
3. extend the x axis to the y axis - one way is simply to add a horizontal line using abline.

Putting that all together for the example above:

x <- 1:5
boxplot(x, frame.plot = FALSE,ylim=c(0,5))
axis(side=1, pos=0, lwd.ticks=0)
abline(h=0)

Stilliform

This solution still doesnt look great, as you can clearly see where the shorter axes was (I wouldn't put this in a publication). This happens because the x-axes you add isn't precisely at zero. If you increase the line thickness of the added line, it looks a bit better, but still feels like a hacky solution: abline(h=0, lwd = 1.5) – Taciturn