R: Line chart is overlapping with text labels

Question

I have created one line graph using plotly in Shiny. Now, in the line graph if I wish to add labels to they are overlapping with the line which makes it difficult to understand.

I am using the following code:

     a = paste("$",prettyNum(de$Amount, big.mark = ",", scientific = FALSE), sep = "")
      f <- list(

        size = 14,
        color = "Black",
        fontface="bold"
      )
      xQuartAxis <- list(
        title = "Month")
      yQuartAxis <- list(
        title = "Amount in $")
      plot_ly(
        x = as.vector(de$Month),
        y = de$Amount,
        text = paste(a), hoverinfo = "text", textinfo="text",showlegend = FALSE,
        name = "Amount Paid",
        mode = "lines+text"
      )%>%

        layout(title=paste("Monthly Amount paid by", clientName,"for the year",selectedYear, sep = " ") ,titlefont =f,t = 150,  xaxis = xQuartAxis, yaxis = yQuartAxis)
})

I am getting this output:

Kindly tell me how can I separate the text from line graph for better visibility?

Thanks :)

Answer 1

I'd suggest making the numbers stand out relative to the line. First, make the line transparent (say, alpha=0.2). The line will still be visible to guide your eye, but the numbers will be highlighted.

Second, truncate the numbers to thousands to match the y-scale. You don't need to display so many digits for the point markers.

Here's a ggplotly version, as I'm not sure how to separately set the opacity for the text markers and the line with plot_ly. You can add, say, opacity=0.3 inside plot_ly(), but that makes the text markers transparent as well.

library(scales)
library(ggplot2)
library(plotly)

# Fake data
set.seed(395875)
de = data.frame(Month=factor(month.abb, levels=month.abb), Amount=rnorm(12, 12000, 1000))

ggplotly(
  ggplot(de, aes(Month,Amount)) +
    geom_line(aes(group=1), alpha=0.2, color="blue") + 
    geom_text(aes(label=paste0("$", sprintf("%1.1f", Amount/1000))), size=3.5) +
    theme_bw() +
    scale_y_continuous(limits=c(0, max(de$Amount)), breaks=seq(0,15000,5000), 
                       labels=paste0("$",seq(0,15000,5000)/1000,"k")) +
    labs(y="Amount ($000)")
)