In R base plot, move axis label closer to axis

Question

I have eliminated labels on the y axis because only the relative amount is really important.

w <- c(34170,24911,20323,14290,9605,7803,7113,6031,5140,4469)
plot(1:length(w), w, type="b", xlab="Number of clusters",
     ylab="Within-cluster variance",
     main="K=5 eliminates most of the within-cluster variance",
     cex.main=1.5,
     cex.lab=1.2,
     font.main=20,
     yaxt='n',lab=c(length(w),5,7), # no ticks on y axis, all ticks on x
     family="Calibri Light")

However, suppressing those tick labels leaves a lot of white space between the y axis label ("Within-cluster variance") and the y axis. Is there a way to nudge it back over? If I somehow set the (invisible) tick labels to go inside the axis, would the axis label settles along the axis?

Answer 1

Try setting ylab="" in your plot call and use title to set the label of the y-axis manually. Using line you could adjust the position of the label, e.g.:

plot(1:length(w), w, type="b", xlab="Number of clusters", ylab="",
     main="K=5 eliminates most of the within-cluster variance",
     cex.main=1.5,
     cex.lab=1.2,
     font.main=20,
     yaxt='n',lab=c(length(w),5,7), # no ticks on y axis, all ticks on x
     family="Calibri Light")

title(ylab="Within-cluster variance", line=0, cex.lab=1.2, family="Calibri Light")

Please read ?title for more details.