Left-adjust title in ggplot2, or absolute position for ggtitle

Question

I would like to left align the title in a plot like this

ggplot(data = economics, aes(x = date, y = unemploy)) +
 geom_line() +
 ggtitle(\"Unemployment in US         


        

Answer 1

I wrote the ggdraw() layer in cowplot specifically so that I could make annotations easily anywhere on a plot. It sets up a coordinate system that covers the entire plot area, not just the plot panel, and runs from 0 to 1 in both the x and y direction. Using this approach, it is easy to place your title wherever you want.

library(cowplot)
theme_set(theme_gray()) # revert to ggplot2 default theme

p <- ggplot(data = economics, aes(x = date, y = unemploy)) +
  geom_line() +
  ggtitle("") + # make space for title on the plot
  xlab("") +
  ylab("Unemployed [thousands]")

ggdraw(p) + draw_text("Unemployment in USA between 1967 and 2007", 
                      x = 0.01, y = 0.98, hjust = 0, vjust = 1,
                      size = 12)  # default font size is 14, 
                                  # which is too big for theme_gray()