Formatting text in Stata graphs

How can letters in Stata graphs be formatted?

Text in Stata graphs can be formatted according to the SMCL standards, for instance

sysuse auto 
regress mpg weight
local r_sq = round(e(r2_a), .01)
scatter mpg weight, title("Mileage {it:decreases} with weight") ///
                    text(30 4000 "R{sup:2} = `r_sq'")

Other useful SMCL tags for this purpose are bold text {bf}, superscripts {sup}, and subscripts {sub}. The Stata help for -text- has a full list here, including a list of greek, math, and other symbols.  Furthermore, the page explains that fonts in graphs can also be adjusted without having to change the entire -scheme- of the graph.

 

How can odd characters be included in Stata graphs?

Nonstandard characters like the en or em dash can also be included in graph text by using the {char} tag. {char} is followed by the ASCII (or rather ANSI/Windows-1252) code; so in order to obtain the ASCII-superscripted 2, one needs to write {char 178} or just {c 178} (no colon in between).

#delimit ;
scatter mpg weight, title("Mileage{char 151}
                           does it decrease with weight?")
                    text(30 4000 "R{char 178} = `r_sq'") ;
#delimit cr

The readymade superscript 2 actually seems to be a bit clearer than the 2 superscripted by Stata.

More details on displaying characters via ASCII codes can be found here.

Cox (2004) describes a somewhat more awkward way of using odd characters, namely by assigning them to locals first and then including the locals into the text strings.

 

How can a line break be included in a Stata graph?

For titles, creating a line break is rather straightforward. Simply put the text in two sets of double quotes " ", the line break will appear between those two line breaks:

#delimit ;
scatter mpg weight, title("Mileage:" 
                          "Does it decrease with weight?");
#delimit cr

However, when doing this in a label command, it will yield an error message:

option labels() incorrectly specified
        expects, # "label" # label ...  r(198);

Cox (2005) explains how this can be fixed. The intuition to use two sets of double quotes is also correct for labels in a graph. However, in order to have Stata understand this in a -label()- option, the two sets of double quotes need to be included in compound double quotes `" "'. Cox gives the following example:

graph hbar (mean) mpg, over(foreign, relabel(1 `" "Domestic" "cars" "' ///
                                             2 `" "Foreign" "cars" "'))

 

Reference

Cox, Nicholas J. 2004. "Stata Tip 6. Inserting Awkward Characters in the Plot." Stata Journal 4(1):95-96.

Cox, Nicholas J. 2005. "Stata Tip 24. Axis Labels on Two or More Levels." Stata Journal 5(3):469-469.