Speaking Stata: Axis Practice, or What Goes Where on a Graph

Abstract

Conventions about what information goes on each axis of a two-way plot are precisely that, conventions. This column discusses—historically, syntactically, and by example—the idea that flouting convention in various ways can lead to small but useful improvements in graph display. Putting y-axis information on the right or on the top, or putting x-axis information on the top, often is useful. The most substantial examples are for multiple quantile plots, for which the new command multqplot is offered, and table-like graphs, which are made even more table-like by mimicking column headers.