[R] Exporting R graphics into Word without losing graph quality

[david hamer]

Hello,

My x-y scatterplot produces a very ragged best-fit line when imported into
Word.



* >plot (data.file$x, data.file$y, type = "p", las=1, pch=20,        ylab =
expression("Cover of Species y" ~ (m^{2}~ha^{-1} )),        xlab =
expression("Cover of Species x" ~ (m^{2}~ha^{-1}))  )    >lines  (
data.file$x,   fitted ( model.x )  )*

 A suggestion from the internet is to use .png at high (1200) resolution.
   * >dev.print  ( device = png,  file = "R.graph.png",  width = 1200,
height = 700)*
This gives a high–quality graph, but the titles and tick–mark labels become
very tiny when exported into Word.

I therefore increased the size of the titles and tick–mark labels with cex.
   * >plot (......cex =1.8, cex.lab = 1.8, cex.axis = 1.25,....)*
But this causes the x–axis title to lie on top of the tick–mark labels.
(This problem does not occur with the y–axis, where the title lies well
away from the y–axis tick–mark labels.)
Changing margins     * >par ( mai = c ( 1.3, 1.35, 1, .75 ) )*    does not
seem to have any effect on this.

A suggestion from the internet is to delete the titles from plot, and use
mtext with line=4 to drop the title lower on the graph.

* >plot (.......  ylab = " ", xlab = " ".....)    >mtext(side = 1, "Cover
of Species x (superscripts??)", line = 4)*
This works, but with mtext I have now lost the ability to have the
superscripts in the axis title.

And I am back full circle, having to lower the resolution of the graph to
keep the x–axis title away from the axis, and thus reverting to a ragged,
segmented “line” when exported to Word......

Final note:  The R graphics window version of the graph becomes very
distorted, even though the graph may be of high quality (other than the
problem of the x-axis title overlaying the x-axis tick-mark labels) once in
Word.  I guess this is because of using “tricks” to try to get a desired
end-product in Word....

Thanks for any suggestions,
         David.

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