First a question, are you married to using scale=0.4
(you could force the width of the image using width=...
).
Here I've taken some liberties with your formatting:
\documentclass[12pt,draft]{cit_thesis11}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{subfig}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\usepackage{calc}
\newsubfloat{figure}
\pagestyle{empty}
\begin{document}
\begin{figure}[!ht]
{\begin{minipage}{\dimexpr\linewidth-2.50cm+0.5cm}
\centering
\rotatebox{90}{\makebox[0pt]{\textcolor{red}{Y-axis label}}}
{\begin{minipage}{6.5cm+1cm}%
\raisebox{\dimexpr-.5\height-1em}{\includegraphics[width=6.5cm]{Figures/knockho1.eps}}\ \subfloat[\label{label1}]{} \\
\raisebox{\dimexpr-.5\height-1em}{\includegraphics[width=6.5cm]{Figures/knockho1.eps}}\ \subfloat[\label{label2}]{}
%% use hspace to center the x-axis lable and then add some space at the end for the subfloat labels.
\vspace*{0.1cm}\hspace*{\fill}\textcolor{red}{X-axis label}\hspace*{\fill}\hspace*{0.5cm}
\end{minipage}}%
\caption{This is the text that describes \protect\subref{label1} and \protect\subref{label2}.}
\end{minipage}}
\end{figure}
\end{document}
which renders
There are some surrounding parentheses about the boxes. They are not necessary, but I left them there so you can easily put in an \fbox
at the beginning of each to see how the boxes themselves look.
Some other things I've changed:
I use the calc
package. This makes managing the widths of the minipages a bit easier. I've taken the centering
out of the inner-most minipage
because that's part of what's creating the undesirable excess space. I've allowed 1cm
for the subfigure labels (may not be enough). I've then inserted the same space at the end of the line for defining the x-axis label to give the appearance of the x-axis label being centered under the graphs.
The \centering
in the minipage
for the y-axis label is not necessary. In fact that entire minipage is not necessary. So, I've placed the y-axis label inside a makebox
which I've specified to have zero width. Then I rotate it. This ensures that it will be centered on the box containing the two graphics (though that box also contains the x-axis label). Also, I've corrected your hyphenation. In fact, you could add some dummy space at the beginning of the makebox
as in
\rotatebox{90}{\makebox[0pt]{\textcolor{red}{\rule{1\baselineskip}{0pt}Y-axis label}}}
which will better center the y-axis label to the two figures.
Best Answer
One way to do this would be to define a
minipage
to contain the y-axis, and simply place the text for the x-axis with an appropriate\hspace*{}
preceding it.Code: