How to generate beautiful tables in LaTeX

But I would like something like: Is there a way of getting this? The color and the lines specially. Btw, I use TexStudio and MikTex.

\documentclass[12pt] \usepackage[lmargin=2cm, rmargin=2cm, top=1.5cm, bottom=2cm] \usepackage[T1] \usepackage[utf8] \usepackage[british,UKenglish,USenglish,english,american]

What exactly do you want to have? The spacing? The lines (see booktabs -package)? The colored background? The caption?

Take a look at the booktabs documentation for general tips about table design, and particularly for the horizontal rules created with \toprule , \midrule and \bottomrule . Also take a look at siunitx 's S type column for numerical columns. Take a look at the array package to inject code for formatting of a column (e.g., to make the column print bold), last take a look at the collcell package to assign the effects of a macro to a complete column (e.g., for your molecular formulae).

Using the center environment inside of table results in extra vertical white space. You may want to replace the center environment with the \centering command.

please tell us which document class, which font, and which fontsize you employ. And, how wide are the margins?

4 Answers 4

Here are some suggestions, not made in any particular order:

• Remove center environment, use a \centering instruction instead.
• Drop \newline\newline before \caption . (Aside: The presence of \newline\newline is causing your tabular environment not to be centered horizontally even though it's embedded in a center environment.)
• Remove all vertical lines and suppress whitespace padding at edges of table.
• Load the booktabs package and replace \hline with \toprule , \midrule , and \bottomrule as needed, add a bit of vertical whitespace halfway through the table via \addlinespace . Aside: The user guide of the booktabs package is chock-full of good advice on table design. It' well worth a read -- and re-read!
• Remove the \renewcommandand \small directives.
• Load the siunitx package and use the S column type for columns 2 and 4.
• No vulgar-looking bold-facing of header cells, please.
• The appears to be no need for automatic line-breaking in cells.
• Employ the threeparttable environment to assure that the caption won't be wider than the tabular material. (Aside: the threeparttable environment can do additional things beyond assuring that the caption's width doesn't exceed width of table.)
• Impose more structure/hierarchy on the header cells of the final two columns. ("l.b." and "u.b." stands for "lower bound" and "upper bound", right?)

The framelines in the following screenshot indicate the edges of the text block. They get inserted because I set the showframe option when loading the geometry package.

\documentclass[12pt] \usepackage[hmargin=2cm, top=1.5cm, bottom=2cm, showframe] \usepackage[T1] \usepackage[utf8] \usepackage[british,UKenglish,USenglish,english,american] % why not '\usepackage[spanish]'? % New: \usepackage \sisetup \begin \noindent \textcolor<\Large\textbf> \begin[!h] \small \renewcommand \begin \begin <|p<0.5cm>| p | p | p | p | p |> \hline \textbf & \textbf & \textbf & \textbf & \textbf & \textbf \\ \hline 1 & 234523 & LoreIpsum & 234 & 0 & 0 \\ 2 & 2345 & LoreIpsum & 2365 & 0 & 0 \\ 3 & 3453 & LoreIpsum & 45634 & 0 & 0 \\ 4 & 83452 & LoreIpsum & 2456 & 0 & 0 \\ 5 & 210 & LoreIpsum & 245 & 0 & 0 \\ 6 & 3417 & LoreIpsum & 45634 & 0 & 0 \\ 7 & 4345 & LoreIpsum & 3456 & 0 & 0 \\ 8 & 4334 & LoreIpsum & 3456 & 0 & 0 \\ \hline \end \newline\newline \caption> \label \end \end %% after \noindent \textcolor<\Large\textbf> \begin[!h] \centering \begin \begin l S[table-format=6.0] l S[table-format=5.0] cc @<>> \toprule & & & & \multicolumn> \\ \cmidrule(l) & & & <(Kcal/mol)\textsuperscript> & & \\ \midrule 1 & 234523 & LoremIpsum & 234 & 0 & 0 \\ 2 & 2345 & LoremIpsum & 2365 & 0 & 0 \\ 3 & 3453 & LoremIpsum & 45634 & 0 & 0 \\ 4 & 83452 & LoremIpsum & 2456 & 0 & 0 \\ \addlinespace 5 & 210 & LoremIpsum & 245 & 0 & 0 \\ 6 & 3417 & LoremIpsum & 45634 & 0 & 0 \\ 7 & 4345 & LoremIpsum & 3456 & 0 & 0 \\ 8 & 4334 & LoremIpsum & 3456 & 0 & 0 \\ \bottomrule \end \caption> \label \end \end \end