By the end of the chapter you will be able to:
Tables are created using the tabular environment:
\begin{tabular}[postion]{text justification}
The position option controls where the table appears on the page; b for bottom, c for center (default) and t for top. The text justifcation is declared seperately for each column.
| can also be used to create vertical lines between columns. So to begin a table of 3 columns with the first column left justified, the others centered and
vertical lines between columns, we use:
\begin{tabular}{l|c|c}
To enter data into the table we seperate each entry with & and end each line with \\. Finally to put in horizontal
lines we use \hline. Putting all this together creates a table like this:
\begin{tabular}{l|c|c}\hline
Name & Class & Score \\ \hline \hline
Simon & Newton & 52 \\ \hline
Jess & Curie & 90 \\ \hline \hline
\end{tabular}| Justification | Explanation |
|---|---|
| l | Left justified cell contents |
| c | Centered cell contents |
| r | Right justified cell contents |
| p{width} | Paragraph with text at the top of the cell |
| m{width} | Paragraph with text in the middle of the cell (requires array package) |
| p{width} | Paragraph with text at the bottom of the cell (requires array package) |
To span multiple columns we use:
\multicolumn{no.of columns to span}{justification}{cell contents}
So to span two columns with center justified text:
\multicolumn{2}{c}{text}
To span multiple rows add \usepackage{multirow} to the preamble, then use:
\multirow{no. of rows to span}{width}{cell contents}
The width can be set to the natural width of the rows being spanned using *. So to span 4 rows we can use:
\multirow{4}{*}{text}
Putting these two together means that we can create much more complicated tables. In the example to the right \cline{2-3} creates a horizontal line
that only spans columns 2 to 3.
Activity - Create a table in one of your chapter files.
\begin{tabular}{|l|c|c|} \hline
\multicolumn{3}{|c|}{School of Physics} \\ \hline
Class & Name & Score \\ \hline
\multirow {3}{*}{Newton}
& A.Simpson & 72 \\ \cline{2-3}
& J.Smith & 90 \\ \cline{2-3}
& T.Johnson & 63 \\ \hline
\end{tabular}
To caption tables the tabular environment needs to be placed inside the table environment. This also ensures that the table appears in the List of tables at the beginning
of the document. See the example.
\begin{table}[h]\caption{Scores of the Classes}
\centering
\begin{tabular}{|l|c|c|} \hline
Name & Class & Score \\ \hline \hline
Simon & Newton & 52 \\ \hline
Jess & Curie & 90 \\ \hline
\end{tabular}
\label{tab:class}
\end{table}Activity - Give your table a caption and check that it appears in the List of Tables.
