Italicise axis ticks (latex)

Hi,

I'm this is simple to answer but I'd be grateful if somebody could share their wisdom.

Basically, I want to offset the first x axis value from the y axis (rather than them overlapping by default), hence why I've specified my range of x to be four values, though I only want to plot against three of them. Then I want to apply a cell array of characters to the x axis, however, when I try to italicise the characters, it doesn't work.

Below is a stripped down version of my code.

% variables
V_i = {' ','u','v','w'};
x = 0:1:3;
y = rand(3,3)*10;

% Plotting
plot(x(2:4),y)
xlim([0 3])
xticks(0:1:3)

% Naming
title('Variance','Interpreter','latex')
ylabel('$\sigma^{2}$ (m$^{2}$/s$^{2}$)','Interpreter','latex')
set(gca,'xtick',[0:3],'xticklabel',V_i,'FontAngle', 'italic')

[Les Beckham]

Works for me in 2022a on Windows 10.

% variables
V_i = {' ','u','v','w'};
x = 0:1:3;
y = rand(3,3)*10;

% Plotting
plot(x(2:4),y)
xlim([0 3])
xticks(0:1:3)

% Naming
title('Variance','Interpreter','latex')
ylabel('$\sigma^{2}$ (m$^{2}$/s$^{2}$)','Interpreter','latex')
set(gca,'xtick',[0:3],'xticklabel',V_i,'FontAngle', 'italic')

Looks like it works here too. Is this not what you expected?

[Daniel Rowe]

I think it's a Latex interpreter issue. If you precede the code with the following script, it doesnt print the x axis in italics. Sorry, I should've mentioned this.

set(0,'DefaultFigureWindowStyle','docked')
set(0,'defaultfigurecolor',[1 1 1])
set(groot, 'defaultAxesTickLabelInterpreter','latex'); 
set(groot, 'defaulttextinterpreter','latex');   
set(groot, 'defaultLegendInterpreter','latex');
set(groot, 'defaultAxesTitle','latex');

[Les Beckham]

Ah, so 'FontAngle', 'italic' works with the default tex interpreter but not with Latex.

Try changing

V_i = {' ','u','v','w'};

to

V_i = {' ','\textit{u}','\textit{v}','\textit{w}'}; % latex code for italics

and change

set(gca,'xtick',[0:3],'xticklabel',V_i,'FontAngle', 'italic')

to

set(gca,'xtick', [0:3], 'xticklabel', V_i)

That seemed to work.

[Daniel Rowe]

works beautifully, thank you

[Les Beckham]

You are very welcome. If I put this solution in an Answer could you accept it for me?

Answer 1

[Les Beckham]

Try changing

V_i = {' ','u','v','w'};

to

V_i = {' ','\textit{u}','\textit{v}','\textit{w}'}; % latex code for italics

and change

set(gca,'xtick',[0:3],'xticklabel',V_i,'FontAngle', 'italic')

to

set(gca,'xtick', [0:3], 'xticklabel', V_i)

That seems to work.