for interactive users: ===== ================= Alias Property ===== ================= 'lw' 'linewidth' 'ls' 'linestyle' 'c' 'color' 'fc' 'facecolor' 'ec' 'edgecolor' 'mew' 'markeredgewidth' 'aa' 'antialiased' ===== ================= Thus you could abbreviate the above call as:: rc('lines', lw=2, c='r') Note you can use python's kwargs dictionary facility to store dictionaries of default parameters. e.g., you can customize the font rc as follows:: font = {'family' : 'monospace', 'weight' : 'bold', 'size' : 'larger'} rc('font', **font) # pass in the font dict as kwargs This enables you to easily switch between several configurations. Use ``matplotlib.style.use('default')`` or :func:`~matplotlib.rcdefaults` to restore the default `.rcParams` after changes. Notes ----- Similar functionality is available by using the normal dict interface, i.e. ``rcParams.update({"lines.linewidth": 2, ...})`` (but ``rcParams.update`` does not support abbreviations or grouping). Ú linewidthÚ linestyleÚ