How to keep quotation marks in syntax when giving a option two string arguments

[Karl Tjensvoll]

Hello, I am making a lot of graphs, and to keep things neater I would like to make a program. I am unable to extract the exact code, but I am giving an example below.

So I want to plot x against y, and have a texbox above the y-axis as a axis title, simplified code is:

program income_graph
syntax varlist(min=2) [if] [, y_title(str)]

graph twoway line `1' `2' `if', text(310000 -5 `y_title')
  end

When I then do

income_graph fam_inc t, y_title("Family Income" "In Thousands")

I then get the error "In range not allowed r(101)"

If i replace the code with:

program income_graph
syntax varlist(min=2) [if] [, y_title(str)]
graph twoway line `1' `2' `if', text(310000 -5 "`y_title'")
 end

And again run

income_graph fam_inc t, y_title("Family Income" "In Thousands")

, it will now give me a figure, but the title is not in two lines, but in one. So y_title now gives: "Family Income In Thousands" and not "Family Income" "In Thousands"

Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can keep the two arguments, so that I can get the y-axis title on two separate lines?
I have tried to use the -tokenize- code, but already then I can only give it the argument "Family Income In Thousands" , so the middle quotation marks are removed from the beginning, so I suspect I need to modify the -syntax- code, but I havent found any solutions.

[Nick Cox]

The syntax may need to be

syntax varlist(min=2) [if] [, y_title(str asis)

and you're likely to need make much more use of compound double quotes:

`" "'

[Karl Tjensvoll]

The syntax may need to be

syntax varlist(min=2) [if] [, y_title(str asis)

and you're likely to need make much more use of compound double quotes:

`" "'

Excellent, asis does it. Now my program works as intended. I am unsure about the double quotes, for now I have managed without them. But I must confess that when it comes to Stata I am incredibly confused when it comes to locals, calling macroes and quotation marks (and double(/tripple?) quotation marks, especially the

`"` '"'

But now I have the code below, which works as intended (or asis if you´d like).

 program income_graph
syntax varlist(min=2) [if] [, y_title(str asis)]
graph twoway line `1' `2' `if', text(310000 -5 `y_title')
end

Which gives me exactly what I want when i give it

 income_graph fam_inc t, y_title("Family Income" "In Thousands")

[Nick Cox]

Good!