How can I label my graphs as (a), (b), (c) etc in subplot matlab?

I want to describe the graphs in figure caption by referencing them as (a), (b) (c) etc

[Matt J]

Easiest just to add them in Powerpoint.

Answer 1

[Image Analyst]

Use subplot() and title().

% Plot (a) plot.
subplot(3, 1, 1);
plot(1:10, 'r-');
title('(a)', 'FontSize', 15);

% Plot (b) plot.
subplot(3, 1, 2);
plot(10*sin(0:.1:10), 'b-', 'LineWidth', 2);
grid on;
title('(b)', 'FontSize', 15);

% Plot (a) plot.
subplot(3, 1, 3);
plot(cos(1:10), 'k*', 'MarkerSize', 15, 'LineWidth', 2);
grid on;
title('(c)', 'FontSize', 15);

Or you could use xlabel() if you want to put the letters under the x axis, or text() if you want to place them wherever you want.

[madhan ravi]

+1 , ah so labels are titles didn't realise that :-)

[Image Analyst]

Well, title() puts the text above the plot while xlabel() puts the text below the plot.

[madhan ravi]

yes :)

[Sreeraj T]

How to put it inside? Lets say on top-left position?

[Image Analyst]

See if this works:

title('(a)', 'FontSize', 20, 'HorizontalAlignment', 'left');

[Steven Lord]

One possibility is to use the text function.

[Sterling Baird]

I think Image Analyst's solution may need a bit more to get left alignment.

Answer 2

[Sterling Baird]

Personally, I've liked using:

nIDs = 4;
alphabet = ('a':'z').';
chars = num2cell(alphabet(1:nIDs));
chars = chars.';
charlbl = strcat('(',chars,')'); % {'(a)','(b)','(c)','(d)'}
text(0.025,0.95,charlbl{1},'Units','normalized','FontSize',12)

This works fine for me for tiled layouts, and does a decent job for scientific figures.

[Sreeraj T]

This is pretty nice. One can also change

'a':'z'

to

'1':'9'

and see the difference!

[Wiqas Ahmad]

I'm using the same command for labeling my subplots, however I want to place the labels (a),(b),... outside of the axes subplot. How can I do it?

[Image Analyst]

@Wiqas Ahmad Try using text() or put it into the title or axes labels using sprintf() and title() or xlabel() or ylabel().

[Sanita Dhaubanjar]

You can make the label generation shorter using:

charlbl =  compose("(%s)",('a':'z').'); 

Answer 3

[madhan ravi]

Use legend()

legend('(a)','(b)','(c)')

[Shikhar Saxena]

No, legend is different. I want to label each graph as a,b,c etc. Like see in figure below generated through subplot function matlab, I want to label three graphs as a, b and c.

Answer 4

[Alex Ryabov]

I hope this function will help

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/95478-addletters2plots

fg = figure(1);
clf
subplot(2, 2, 1)
subplot(2, 2, 2)
subplot(2, 1, 2)
legend
colorbar
AddLetters2Plots(fg, 'HShift', 0, 'VShift', 0, 'Direction', 'TopDown')

Answer 5

[Dion Wilde]

Personally i found my optimum with the following solution:

ax=gca;
% read out the position of the axis in the unit "characters"
set(ax,'Units','characters'); a=get(ax,'Position');
% this determines the type of the plot
if isequal(get(ax,'View'),[0 90]) % this is used for 2D plots
    str_place=2; 
else  % this is used for 3D plots, in this case also all other plots
    str_place=-2; 
end
% this sets an 'a)' right at the top left of the axes
text(ax,0,a(end)+str_place,'a)','Units','characters')

I specifically used the units "characters" here, because it consistently sets the character above the axes indepently of the actual size of the axis. The latter is difficult if not impossible to do with "units", "normalized".

[Sreeraj T]

What does "end" in the last line indicates? It ends what?

[Dion Wilde]

my bad, i copy pasted it from my own code. I deleted the "end".