Place a Break Mark on an Axis

Places a break mark on an axis on an existing plot.

AxisBreak(axis = 1, breakpos = NULL, pos = NA, bgcol = "white", 
           breakcol = "black", style = "slash", brw = 0.02)

Arguments

axis

which axis to break.

breakpos

where to place the break in user units.

pos

position of the axis (see axis).

bgcol

the color of the plot background.

breakcol

the color of the "break" marker.

style

Either gap, slash or zigzag.

brw

break width relative to plot width.

Details

The pos argument is not needed unless the user has specified a different position from the default for the axis to be broken.

Note

There is some controversy about the propriety of using discontinuous coordinates for plotting, and thus axis breaks. Discontinuous coordinates allow widely separated groups of values or outliers to appear without devoting too much of the plot to empty space.
The major objection seems to be that the reader will be misled by assuming continuous coordinates. The gap style that clearly separates the two sections of the plot is probably best for avoiding this.

Author

Jim Lemon and Ben Bolker

Examples

plot(3:10, main="Axis break test")

# put a break at the default axis and position
AxisBreak()
AxisBreak(2, 2.9, style="zigzag")