For a project I'm currently working on, I'm trying to take a large database of collected specimens and sorting each species by year and amount collected. I want to have each graph comparable, so I want a standardized set of values for the y and x axis. I understand how to set a max and min value for the y axis, but how can I set a specific set of numbers to the x axis?

example:
species A-
1984 5
1988 3

but the date range I would like to have on the x axis is:
1898 to 2008 going in increments of 10

I tried going in and editing the numbers manually, but it skews the information. I've also tried setting a list of dates, setting their values to 0, but some of the dates fall between the increments of 10 (ie the 1984 falls between 1978 and 1988) and I don't want to add extra dates in the standardized set of numbers.

Am I asking for too much, or is there a way to do this