Inserting LaTex Special Characters as xticklabel Values

Question

I'm trying to make a bar chart comparing the distribution of punctuation marks between two datasets. I am trying to get the punctuation mark to appear as the xticklabel for each pair of bars but LaTex keeps assuming I mean to close a pair of $ or throws some other error:

\begin{figure}[h]
\begin{tikzpicture}
    \begin{axis}[
        xtick={1, 2..,25},
        xticklabels={\!, \", \#, \$, \%, \&, \', \(, \), \*, \+, \,, \-, \., \/, \:, \;, \=, \?, \@, \[, \], \`, \|, \textasciitilde},
        ylabel=Year,
        enlargelimits=0.05,
        legend style={at={(0.5,-0.1)},
        anchor=north,legend columns=-1},
        ybar interval=0.7,
    ]
    \addplot
        coordinates {(1,32) (2,4751) (3,57) (4,57) (5,27) (6,49) (7,4198) (8,59) (9,59) (10,29) (11,5) (12,737) (13,1151) (14,390) (15,21) (16,362) (17,2) (18,2) (19,43) (20,6) (21,1) (22,1.0) (23,0) (24,5) (25,20)};
    \addplot
        coordinates {(1,8) (2,390) (3,0) (4,202) (5,117) (6,50) (7,1671) (8,32) (9,32) (10,1) (11,5) (12,3504) (13,1604) (14,2687) (15,60) (16,711) (17,228) (18,1) (19,119) (20,0)  (21,0) (22,0) (23,2) (24,0) (25,0)};
    %\legend{Set1,Set2}
    \end{axis}
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{figure}

As shown above, I have tried escaping the characters, tried escaping only the LaTex special characters, using \verb|| to make them literal (which doesn't work for '|') and I am at a loss for how to approach this.

Thanks for any help!

Answer 1

You don't need to escape all of them. In fact, some of the symbols are math spacing commands. The following works:

\documentclass[]{report}

\usepackage{tikz}
\usepackage{pgfplots}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}

\begin{document}

\begin{figure}[h]
\begin{tikzpicture}
    \begin{axis}[
        xtick={1, 2..,25},
        xticklabels={!, ", \#, \$, \%, \&, ', {(}, {)}, *, +, \textbf{,}, -,  ., /, :, ;, =, ?, @, [, ], `, |, \textasciitilde},
        xticklabel style={text height=2ex},
        ylabel=Year,
        enlargelimits=0.05,
        legend style={at={(0.5,-0.1)},
        anchor=north,legend columns=-1},
        ybar interval=0.7,
    ]
    \addplot
        coordinates {(1,32) (2,4751) (3,57) (4,57) (5,27) (6,49) (7,4198) (8,59) (9,59) (10,29) (11,5) (12,737) (13,1151) (14,390) (15,21) (16,362) (17,2) (18,2) (19,43) (20,6) (21,1) (22,1.0) (23,0) (24,5) (25,20)};
    \addplot
        coordinates {(1,8) (2,390) (3,0) (4,202) (5,117) (6,50) (7,1671) (8,32) (9,32) (10,1) (11,5) (12,3504) (13,1604) (14,2687) (15,60) (16,711) (17,228) (18,1) (19,119) (20,0)  (21,0) (22,0) (23,2) (24,0) (25,0)};
    %\legend{Set1,Set2}
    \end{axis}
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{figure}

\end{document}

Giving you this output:

The brackets need to be enclosed in curly brackets. The comma is more tricky, but it prints when it is enclosed in another command, such as textbf. \usepackage[T1]{fontenc} is necessary to print the pipe vertically.

Side note: \verb?|? would work, too, as the first character defines the boundaries.