Bar charts with the gridlines erased through the bars

Gridlines can help readers estimate values from a bar chart. In Tufte's redesign, the lines appear as gaps through the bars. This layer draws those gaps using the background colour.

Usage

geom_col_tufte(
  mapping = NULL,
  data = NULL,
  stat = "identity",
  position = "stack",
  ...,
  sides = NULL,
  rule_colour = "white",
  rule_linewidth = 0.6,
  minor = FALSE,
  na.rm = FALSE,
  show.legend = NA,
  inherit.aes = TRUE
)

geom_bar_tufte(
  mapping = NULL,
  data = NULL,
  stat = "count",
  position = "stack",
  ...,
  sides = NULL,
  rule_colour = "white",
  rule_linewidth = 0.6,
  minor = FALSE,
  na.rm = FALSE,
  show.legend = NA,
  inherit.aes = TRUE
)

Arguments

mapping, data, stat, position, na.rm, show.legend, inherit.aes, ...

Standard ggplot2 layer arguments. See layer().

sides

Which axis's breaks to erase through the bars. Defaults to NULL, which works it out from the layer: vertical bars get the "y" breaks, and horizontal ones, however you wrote them, get "x". Pass "x" or "y" to override.

rule_colour

Colour of the erased rules. Defaults to "white", which is correct on a white page; set it to your background colour otherwise.

rule_linewidth

Width of the erased rules. Defaults to 0.6.

minor

Logical. Erase minor breaks as well as major ones? Defaults to FALSE.

Value

A ggplot2 layer.

Details

Use it with theme_tufte() and grid = "none". The layer already draws the rules, so there's no need for the theme to add another grid.

Examples

library(ggplot2)
d <- data.frame(
  who = c("Reagan", "Bush", "Clinton", "Bush", "Obama"),
  value = c(3.5, 2.3, 3.9, 2.1, 2.5)
)
ggplot(d, aes(who, value)) +
  geom_col_tufte(fill = "grey70") +
  theme_tufte()