Tables
The tabular environment can be used to typeset tables with optional horizontal and vertical lines. LaTeX determines the width of the columns automatically.
The first line of the environment has the form:
\begin{tabular}[pos]{table spec}The table spec argument tells LaTeX the alignment to be used in each column and the vertical lines to insert.
The number of columns does not need to be specified as it is inferred by looking at the number of arguments provided. It is also possible to add vertical lines between the columns here. The following symbols are available to describe the table columns (some of them require that the package array has been loaded):
l / left-justified columnc / centered column
r / right-justified column
p{'width'} / paragraph column with text vertically aligned at the top
m{'width'} / paragraph column with text vertically aligned in the middle (requires array package)
b{'width'} / paragraph column with text vertically aligned at the bottom (requires array package)
| / vertical line
|| / double vertical line
In the first line you have pointed out how many columns you want, their alignment and the vertical lines to separate them. Once in the environment, you have to introduce the text you want, separating between cells and introducing new lines. The commands you have to use are the following:
column separator\\ / start new row (additional space may be specified after \\ using square brackets, such as \\[6pt])
\hline / horizontal line
\newline / start a new line within a cell (in a paragraph column)
\cline{i-j} / partial horizontal line beginning in column i and ending in column j
Note, any white space inserted between these commands is purely down to ones' preferences. I personally add spaces between to make it easier to read.
Basic examples
This example shows how to create a simple table in LaTeX. It is a three-by-three table, but without any lines.
\begin{tabular}{ l c r }1 & 2 & 3 \\
4 & 5 & 6 \\
7 & 8 & 9 \\
\end{tabular} /
Expanding upon that by including some vertical lines:
\begin{tabular}{ l | c || r }1 & 2 & 3 \\
4 & 5 & 6 \\
7 & 8 & 9 \\
\end{tabular} /
To add horizontal lines to the very top and bottom edges of the table:
\begin{tabular}{ l | c || r }\hline
1 & 2 & 3 \\
4 & 5 & 6 \\
7 & 8 & 9 \\
\hline
\end{tabular} /
And finally, to add lines between all rows, as well as centering (notice the use of the center environment - of course, the result of this is not obvious from the preview on this web page):
\begin{center}\begin{tabular}{ l | c || r }
\hline
1 & 2 & 3 \\ \hline
4 & 5 & 6 \\ \hline
7 & 8 & 9 \\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\end{center} /
\begin{tabular}{|r|l|}
\hline
7C0 & hexadecimal \\
3700 & octal \\ \cline{2-2}
11111000000 & binary \\
\hline \hline
1984 & decimal \\
\hline
\end{tabular} /
To specify a font format (such as bold, italic, etc.) for an entire column, you can add {\format} before you declare the alignment. For example \begin{tabular}{{\bfseries}l c >{\itshape}r} will indicate a three column table with the first one aligned to the left and in bold font, the second one aligned in the center and with normal font, and the third aligned to the right and in italic.
The optional parameter pos can be used to specify the vertical position of the table relative to the baseline of the surrounding text. In most cases, you will not need this option. It becomes relevant only if your table is not in a paragraph of its own. You can use the following letters:
b / bottomc / center (default)
t / top
Text wrapping in tables
LaTeX's algorithms for formatting tables have a few shortcomings. One is that it will not automatically wrap text in cells, even if it overruns the width of the page. For columns that will contain text whose length exceeds the column's width, it is recommended that you use the p attribute and specify the desired width of the column (although it may take some trial-and-error to get the result you want). For a more convenient method, have a look at Thetabularx package, or The tabulary package.
Instead of p, use the m attribute to have the lines aligned toward the middle of the box or the b attribute to align along the bottom of the box.
Here is a simple example. The following code creates two tables with the same code; the only difference is that the last column of the second one has a defined width of 5 centimeters, while in the first one we didn't specify any width. Compiling this code:
\documentclass{article}\usepackage[english]{babel}
\begin{document}
Without specifying width for last column:
\begin{center}
\begin{tabular}{| l | l | l | l |}
\hline
Day & Min Temp & Max Temp & Summary \\ \hline
Monday & 11C & 22C & A clear day with lots of sunshine.
However, the strong breeze will bring down the temperatures. \\ \hline
Tuesday & 9C & 19C & Cloudy with rain, across many northern regions. Clear spells
across most of Scotland and Northern Ireland,
but rain reaching the far northwest. \\ \hline
Wednesday & 10C & 21C & Rain will still linger for the morning.
Conditions will improve by early afternoon and continue
throughout the evening. \\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\end{center}
With width specified:
\begin{center}
\begin{tabular}{ | l | l | l | p{5cm} |}
\hline
Day & Min Temp & Max Temp & Summary \\ \hline
Monday & 11C & 22C & A clear day with lots of sunshine.
However, the strong breeze will bring down the temperatures. \\ \hline
Tuesday & 9C & 19C & Cloudy with rain, across many northern regions. Clear spells
across most of Scotland and Northern Ireland,
but rain reaching the far northwest. \\ \hline
Wednesday & 10C & 21C & Rain will still linger for the morning.
Conditions will improve by early afternoon and continue
throughout the evening. \\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\end{center}
\end{document}
You get the following output:
Note that the first table has been cropped, since the output is wider than the page width.
Manually Broken Paragraphs in Table Cells
Sometimes it is necessary to not rely on the breaking algorithm when using the pspecifier, but rather specify the line breaks by hand. In this case it is easiest to use a \parbox:
\begin{tabular}{cc}boring cell content & \parbox[t]{5cm}{rather long par\\new par}
\end{tabular}
Space between columns
To tweak the space between columns (LaTeX will by default choose very tight columns), one can alter the column separation: \setlength{\tabcolsep}{5pt}. The default value is 6pt.
Space between rows
Re-define the \arraystretch command to set the space between rows:
\renewcommand{\arraystretch}{1.5}Default value is 1.0.
An alternative way to adjust the rule spacing is to add \noalign{\smallskip} before or after the \hline and \cline{i-j} commands:
\begin{tabular}{ | l | l | r | }\hline\noalign{\smallskip}
\multicolumn{2}{c}{Item} \\
\cline{1-2}\noalign{\smallskip}
Animal & Description & Price (\$) \\
\noalign{\smallskip}\hline\noalign{\smallskip}
Gnat & per gram & 13.65 \\
& each 0.01 \\
Gnu & stuffed & 92.50 \\
Emu & stuffed & 33.33 \\
Armadillo & frozen & 8.99 \\
\noalign{\smallskip}\hline
\end{tabular}
You may also specify the skip after a line explicitly using glue after the line terminator
\begin{tabular}{ll}\hline
Mineral & Color \\[1cm]
Ruby & red \\
Sapphire & blue \\
\hline
\end{tabular}
Defining multiple columns
It is possible to define many identical columns at once using the *{''num''}{''str''} syntax. This is particularly useful when your table has many columns.
Here is a table with six centered columns flanked by a single column on each side:
\begin{tabular}{l*{6}{c}r}Team & P & W & D & L & F & A & Pts \\
\hline
Manchester United & 6 & 4 & 0 & 2 & 10 & 5 & 12 \\
Celtic & 6 & 3 & 0 & 3 & 8 & 9 & 9 \\
Benfica & 6 & 2 & 1 & 3 & 7 & 8 & 7 \\
FC Copenhagen & 6 & 2 & 1 & 3 & 5 & 8 & 7 \\
\end{tabular} /
Row specification
It might be convenient to apply the same command over every cell of a row, just as for column. Unfortunately the tabular environment cannot do that by default. We will need tabu instead, which provides the \rowfont option.
\begin{tabu}{XX}\rowfont{\bfseries\itshape\large} Header1 Header2 \\
\hline
Cell2 Cell2
\end{tabu}
Resize tables
The graphicx packages features the command \resizebox{width}{height}{object} which can be used with tabular to specify the height and width of a table. The following example shows how to resize a table to 8cm width while maintaining the original width/height ratio.
\usepackage{graphicx}% ...
\resizebox{8cm}{!} {
\begin{tabular}...
\end{tabular}
}
Alternatively you can use \scalebox{ratio}{object} in the same way but with ratios rather than fixed sizes:
\usepackage{graphicx}% ...
\scalebox{0.7}{
\begin{tabular}...
\end{tabular}
Changing font size
A table can be globally switched to a different font size by simply adding the desired size command (here: \footnotesize) in the table scope, which may be after the \begin{table} statement if you use floats, otherwise you need to add a group delimiter.
{\footnotesize\begin{tabular}{| r | r || c | c | c |}
% ...
\end{tabular}
}
\begin{table}[h]\footnotesize
\caption{Performance at peak F-measure}
\begin{tabular}{| r | r || c | c | c |}
% ...
\end{tabular}
\end{table}
Alternatively, you can change the default font for all the tables in your document by placing the following code in the preamble:
\let\oldtabular\tabular\renewcommand{\tabular}{\footnotesize\oldtabular}
See Fonts for named font sizes. The table caption font size is not affected. To control the caption font size, see Caption Styles.
Colors
Alternate row colors in tables
The xcolor package provides the necessary commands to produce tables with alternate row colors, when loaded with the table option. The command \rowcolors{<''starting row''>}{<''odd color''>}{<''even color''>} has to be specified right before the tabular environment starts.
\documentclass{article}\usepackage[table]{xcolor}
\begin{document}
\begin{center}
\rowcolors{1}{green}{pink}
\begin{tabular}{lll}
odd odd odd \\
even even even\\
odd odd odd \\
even even even\\
\end{tabular}
\end{center}
\end{document}
Colors of individual Cells
As above this uses the xcolor package.
% Include this somewhere in your document\usepackage[table]{xcolor}
% Enter this in the cell you wish to color a light grey.
% NB: the word 'gray' here denotes the grayscale color scheme, not the color grey. '0.9' denotes how dark the grey is.
\cellcolor[gray]{0.9}
% The following will color the cell red.
\cellcolor{red}