3.4) Graphical Parameters

If you type ?par, you’ll glimpse the range of graphical parameters that may be specified. In order to set graphical parameters for all subsequent plots, use par() as a function in its own right. Try the following command to set up graphics suitable for some journals, and use the help file to see what the arguments mean:

par(mar=c(4,4,1,1), mgp=c(2,0.5,0), tck=0.02, bty="l", las=1, ps=12)

Another useful argument to par() is mfrow=, used to divide the graphics window up into rows and columns for multiple figures.

Specify par(mfrow=c(2,3)) and then experiment with plots from the columns of the installed data frame swiss. Start by typing str(swiss) (in some environments you may need to type data(swiss) first) to see what columns this data frame has.
Re-do your plots with appropriate axis labels using xlab= and ylab=. (Note that you can’t normally edit plots in R; you just edit the code in your script window and re-run it.)
Adjust the shape of the graphics window by dragging its corner, noting what happens to the relative sizes of text and graphics.

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