Creating Tables with LaTeX

It is normal the need to add tables into documents, If you are using LaTeX to write your documents this goal can also be achieved in a very simple way.

We will have to use the tabular environment.

the format for this is:

\begin{tabular}[pos]{table spec}

Where:

pos

Can be eiter:

• b = bottom
• c = center
• t = top

table spec

Can either:

• l = left-justified column
• c = 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

With these tools we can start making tables:

\begin{center}
\begin{tabular}{||p{2.5cm}|p{2.5cm}|p{2.5cm}|p{2.5cm}|p{2.5cm}|p{2.5cm}||}
\hline
\textbf{Column 1} & \textbf{Column 2} & \textbf{Column 3} & \textbf{Column 4} & \textbf{Column 5} & \textbf{Column 6} \\ \hline
Linux & is  & a  & great & operating & system \\ \hline
xx & xx & xx & xx & xx & xx \\ \hline
\end{tabular}
\end{center}

This will create a table like this one:

Now explain it a little, first the \begin{center} is centering the table in the document, then we start with the table itself, we declare the environment with \begin{tabular} and the specify the columns we are using p{2.5cm} to specify a column 1 inch wide (2.5 cm), as you can also see we are using double || lines at the left and right and only one | in as columns separators, to draw the horizontal lines we use \hline where we need them.

Note that is you do not use p{width} and make a table like this:

\begin{center}
\begin{tabular}{||l|c|c|c|c|r||}
\hline
\textbf{Column 1} & \textbf{Column 2} & \textbf{Column 3} & \textbf{Column 4} & \textbf{Column 5} & \textbf{Column 6} \\ \hline
Linux & is  & a  & great & operating & system \\ \hline
xx & xx & this sentence will never be wrapped and will continue to grow no matter if it extent beyond the paper margins & xx & xx & xx \\ \hline
\end{tabular}
\end{center}

This will be the result:

As you can see the text is never wrapped, therefore it exceeds the paper width.

LaTeX tutorial