Text properties and layout

The matplotlib.text.Text instances have a variety of properties which can be configured via keyword arguments to the text commands (e.g., title(), xlabel() and text()).

Property	Value Type
alpha	float
backgroundcolor	any matplotlib color
bbox	rectangle prop dict plus key 'pad' which is a pad in points
clip_box	a matplotlib.transform.Bbox instance
clip_on	[True | False]
clip_path	a Path instance and a Transform instance, a Patch
color	any matplotlib color
family	[ 'serif' | 'sans-serif' | 'cursive' | 'fantasy' | 'monospace' ]
fontproperties	a matplotlib.font_manager.FontProperties instance
horizontalalignment or ha	[ 'center' | 'right' | 'left' ]
label	any string
linespacing	float
multialignment	['left' | 'right' | 'center' ]
name or fontname	string e.g., ['Sans' | 'Courier' | 'Helvetica' ...]
picker	[None|float|boolean|callable]
position	(x,y)
rotation	[ angle in degrees 'vertical' | 'horizontal'
size or fontsize	[ size in points | relative size, e.g., 'smaller', 'x-large' ]
style or fontstyle	[ 'normal' | 'italic' | 'oblique']
text	string or anything printable with ‘%s’ conversion
transform	a matplotlib.transform transformation instance
variant	[ 'normal' | 'small-caps' ]
verticalalignment or va	[ 'center' | 'top' | 'bottom' | 'baseline' ]
visible	[True | False]
weight or fontweight	[ 'normal' | 'bold' | 'heavy' | 'light' | 'ultrabold' | 'ultralight']
x	float
y	float
zorder	any number

You can layout text with the alignment arguments horizontalalignment, verticalalignment, and multialignment. horizontalalignment controls whether the x positional argument for the text indicates the left, center or right side of the text bounding box. verticalalignment controls whether the y positional argument for the text indicates the bottom, center or top side of the text bounding box. multialignment, for newline separated strings only, controls whether the different lines are left, center or right justified. Here is an example which uses the text() command to show the various alignment possibilities. The use of transform=ax.transAxes throughout the code indicates that the coordinates are given relative to the axes bounding box, with 0,0 being the lower left of the axes and 1,1 the upper right.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib.patches as patches

# build a rectangle in axes coords
left, width = .25, .5
bottom, height = .25, .5
right = left + width
top = bottom + height

fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.add_axes([0,0,1,1])

# axes coordinates are 0,0 is bottom left and 1,1 is upper right
p = patches.Rectangle(
    (left, bottom), width, height,
    fill=False, transform=ax.transAxes, clip_on=False
    )

ax.add_patch(p)

ax.text(left, bottom, 'left top',
        horizontalalignment='left',
        verticalalignment='top',
        transform=ax.transAxes)

ax.text(left, bottom, 'left bottom',
        horizontalalignment='left',
        verticalalignment='bottom',
        transform=ax.transAxes)

ax.text(right, top, 'right bottom',
        horizontalalignment='right',
        verticalalignment='bottom',
        transform=ax.transAxes)

ax.text(right, top, 'right top',
        horizontalalignment='right',
        verticalalignment='top',
        transform=ax.transAxes)

ax.text(right, bottom, 'center top',
        horizontalalignment='center',
        verticalalignment='top',
        transform=ax.transAxes)

ax.text(left, 0.5*(bottom+top), 'right center',
        horizontalalignment='right',
        verticalalignment='center',
        rotation='vertical',
        transform=ax.transAxes)

ax.text(left, 0.5*(bottom+top), 'left center',
        horizontalalignment='left',
        verticalalignment='center',
        rotation='vertical',
        transform=ax.transAxes)

ax.text(0.5*(left+right), 0.5*(bottom+top), 'middle',
        horizontalalignment='center',
        verticalalignment='center',
        fontsize=20, color='red',
        transform=ax.transAxes)

ax.text(right, 0.5*(bottom+top), 'centered',
        horizontalalignment='center',
        verticalalignment='center',
        rotation='vertical',
        transform=ax.transAxes)

ax.text(left, top, 'rotated\nwith newlines',
        horizontalalignment='center',
        verticalalignment='center',
        rotation=45,
        transform=ax.transAxes)

ax.set_axis_off()
plt.show()

(Source code, png)