The stem() function produces a simple stem and leaf plot:

• stem(urb) stem and leaf plot of span class="varnam">urb.
• stem(urb, scale=2) the scale= (default 1) modifies the length of the stem and leaf plot, for instance a value of 2, will produce a stem-and-leaf plot that is roughly twice as long as with the default of 1.
• width= modifies the width of the stema-and-leaf plot.
• stem(log10(urb)) stemplot of logged urb.
• apply(world,2,stem) Produces a stemplot for each variable (column) of the data frame world. [Details on apply()]
• by(urb,continent,stem) produces a stemplot of urb for each continent. [Details on by()]

Hans Peter Wolf (University of Bielefeld) has developped a more refined version stem.leaf() available in package is available in library aplpack, offering much more control, producing HI/LO stems showing outliers whenever present. Back to back stemleaves are also available.

• stem.leaf(gnpcap) Stem leaf plot
• stem.leaf.backback(lifeem,lifeef) Back to back stem and leaf plot.
• stem.leaf.backback(lifeem,lifeef,back.to.back=FALSE) Two parallel stem and leaf plots
• stem.leaf(gnpcap, style="bare", depths=FALSE) Different style, does not show depths; different style (default "Tukey")
• stem.leaf(gnpcap, rule.line="Velleman") Number of lines =2*sqrt(n) instead of default "Dixon" = 10*log10(n) or "Sturges" = 1 + log2(n)
• stem1<-stem.leaf(gnpcap) invisibly returns a list of elements, including lower , and upper(list of observation on the low and high stem).

{aplpack} has also a slider.stem.leaf to build stem and leaf plots interactively.