APA-Style Graphs

[ckildegaard]

Hello everyone.

I am in a college class in which I have to write up the results of an experiment in APA format. It is necessary to include two graphs of the results. Here is an example of what the graph should look like, according to the professor.

Now, here is what mine looks like.

The two graphs are for different experiments, but the format is what is important. With mine, the lines run horizontally across one end of the graph to the other. It needs to look like the example, in which the x-axis labels are inset and the lines run horizontally between the two labels (NOT across the whole length of the graph).

Can anyone help me figure out how to get this the way I want? I feel like I’ve tried every option multiple times, and still I have not managed to get it right. Is there simply no feature for this?

Thanks in advance.

(Edit: activated screenshots -AK)

[mikebibo]

As no-one else has responded, and at the risk of embarrassing myself, I can’t find any obvious way to extend the x-axis scale beyond the categories for a line chart either. Someone else might know better. Annoyingly, Excel does what you want by default. You might like to submit an enhancement request.

For a work-around, see here: Add spaces left/right X axis | Line Chart But in your case, with only two categories, this probably produces too much space on either side.

If you instead use a scatterplot with points and lines, you can get the format you want, but the x-axis becomes a numerical scale. An ugly hack, if you are in a hurry to produce something, is to use the scatterplot and suppress the x-axis labels. You can then add your category labels manually, with text boxes.

The legend can simply be dragged and re-sized as desired.

For high-resolution, publication-ready graphs I can recommend the open-source R project (https://www.r-project.org), but it does come with a learning curve.

[ckildegaard]

Thank you for the reply!

I will try that workaround, but it looks like I will probably have to switch to Excel for this particular task (which is quite unfortunate).

I am very surprised something so simple isn’t available in LO, and I will definitely submit an Enhancement Request (do you know offhand where I go to do that)?

[mikebibo]

I’ve never actually used it, but I found this: Where to place an enhancement request?. Good luck with your project.