How do I draw gridlines using abline() that are behind the data?

Question

When I draw grid lines on a plot using abline() the grid lines are drawn over the data.

Is there a way to draw the abline() lines behind

Answer 1

Plot first with type="n" to establish coordinates. Then put in the grid lines, then plot again with your regular plot type:

plot(x, y, col = 'red', type = 'n', lwd = 3, pch = 15)
abline(h = seq(0, 10, .5), col = 'lightgray', lty = 3)
abline(v = seq(0, 10, .5), col = 'lightgray', lty = 3)
par(new=TRUE)
plot(x, y, col = 'red', type = 'o', lwd = 3, pch = 15)

I admit that I have always thought the name for that par parameter was "backwards."