How do I fit long title?

Question

There's a similar question - but I can't make the solution proposed there work.

Here's an example plot with a long title:

#!/usr/bin/env python

import matplotlib
import matplotlib.pyplot
import textwrap

x = [1,2,3]
y = [4,5,6]

# initialization:
fig = matplotlib.pyplot.figure(figsize=(8.0, 5.0)) 

# lines:
fig.add_subplot(111).plot(x, y)

# title:
myTitle = "Some really really long long long title I really really need - and just can't - just can't - make it any - simply any - shorter - at all."

fig.add_subplot(111).set_title("\n".join(textwrap.wrap(myTitle, 80)))

# tight:
(matplotlib.pyplot).tight_layout()

# saving:
fig.savefig("fig.png")

it gives a

 AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'tight_layout'

and if I replace (matplotlib.pyplot).tight_layout() with fig.tight_layout() it gives:

 AttributeError: 'Figure' object has no attribute 'tight_layout'

So my question is - how do I fit the title to the plot?

Answer 1

• matplotlib: Auto-wrapping text is the official answer from the matplotlib documentation
  • Review the Note for associated caveats.
• matplotlib: Text properties and layout are also useful
• It doesn't work to display an inline plot in Jupyter because of GitHub: Text wrapping doesn't seem to work in jupyter notebook #10869 unless you do this answer Matplotlib and Ipython-notebook: Displaying exactly the figure that will be saved
  • plt.savefig(...) seems to work properly with wrap

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

x = [1,2,3]
y = [4,5,6]

# initialization:
fig, axes = plt.subplots(figsize=(8.0, 5.0))

# title:
myTitle = "Some really really long long long title I really really need - and just can't - just can't - make it any - simply any - shorter - at all."

# lines:
axes.plot(x, y)

# set title
axes.set_title(myTitle, loc='center', wrap=True)

plt.show()

• The following also works

plt.figure(figsize=(8, 5))

# title:
myTitle = "Some really really long long long title I really really need - and just can't - just can't - make it any - simply any - shorter - at all."

# lines:
plt.plot(x, y)

# set title
plt.title(myTitle, loc='center', wrap=True)

plt.show()

Note

• The following way of adding an axes is deprecated

# lines:
fig.add_subplot(111).plot(x, y)

# title:
myTitle = "Some really really long long long title I really really need - and just can't - just can't - make it any - simply any - shorter - at all."

fig.add_subplot(111).set_title(myTitle, loc='center', wrap=True)

MatplotlibDeprecationWarning: Adding an axes using the same arguments as a previous axes currently reuses the earlier instance. In a future version, a new instance will always be created and returned. Meanwhile, this warning can be suppressed, and the future behavior ensured, by passing a unique label to each axes instance.

Answer 2

One way to do it is to simply change the font size of the title:

import pylab as plt

plt.rcParams["axes.titlesize"] = 8

myTitle = "Some really really long long long title I really really need - and just can't - just can't - make it any - simply any - shorter - at all."
plt.title(myTitle)
plt.show()

In the answer you linked are several other good solutions that involve adding newlines. There is even an automatic solution that resizes based off of the figure!

Answer 3

I preferred to adapt @Adobe's solution in this way:

plt.title("First Title\n%s" % "\n".join(wrap("Second Title", width=60)))

Answer 4

Add \n in your text title

Before

axs[0, 0].set_title('pure imshow of 2D-array (RGB)')
axs[0, 1].set_title('Mean filter')                                     # imshow by default applies a standard colormap,  viridis cmap, which is greenish. 
axs[0, 2].set_title('pure imshow of 2D-array (R-channel)')             # 
axs[1, 0].set_title('imshow of 2D-array with R values cmap="Grey_r"')
axs[1, 1].set_title('imshow of 2D-array with R values cmap="Reds_r"')
axs[1, 2].set_title('imshow of 3D-array with coordinates 1 and 2 \n(i.e.: channels G and B) set to 0')

After

axs[1, 0].set_title('imshow of 2D-array \n with R values cmap="Grey_r"')
axs[1, 1].set_title('imshow of 2D-array \n with R values cmap="Reds_r"')
axs[1, 2].set_title('imshow of 3D-array with coordinates 1 and 2 \n channels G and B) set to 0')