Rotated tick labels

Rotating tick labels can be useful when the labels are long and overlap with each other. Adjust the tick properties using tick_params: Set the angle in degrees via the rotation parameter. Set the rotation_mode parameter to "xtick" / "ytick" to make the text point towards the tick, see also set_rotation_mode.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

population = {
    'India': 1417.492,
    'China': 1404.89,
    'United States': 341.784857,
    'Indonesia': 284.438782,
    'Pakistan': 241.499431,
    'Nigeria': 223.8,
    'Brazil': 213.421037,
    'Bangladesh': 169.828911,
    'Russia': 146.028325,
    'Mexico': 131.001723,
    'Japan': 122.95,
    'Philippines': 114.1236,
    'DR Congo': 112.832,
    'Ethiopia': 111.652998,
    'Egypt': 107.868296,
    'Vietnam': 102.3,
}

fig, ax = plt.subplots()
ax.bar(population.keys(), population.values())
ax.tick_params("x", rotation=45, rotation_mode="xtick")
ax.set_ylabel("population (millions)")
plt.show()

References

The use of the following functions, methods, classes and modules is shown in this example:

• matplotlib.axes.Axes.tick_params / matplotlib.pyplot.tick_params

Tags: component: ticks plot-type: bar