[Tex/LaTex] Column alignment and spacing in tabularx

tabularx

I have a problem with my tables and I am not sure why. I made this table format a long time ago and wanted to use the same style again. Though I cannot seem to get the leftmost column to behave.

I just want all the columns to be equal and be centered.

\begin{table}[!ht]
\begin{tabularx}{\linewidth}{X*{4}{c}}
  \hline\\   \multicolumn{4}{c}{\Large Keywords}
  \\
  \hline
  \\
  \large A & \large B & \large C & \large D\\\\ 
  1 & 2 & 3  & 4\\ 

  \hline
\end{tabularx}
\caption{test}\label{test}
\end{table}

This is what it looks like now.

How would one go about fixing this? 🙂

//Bogi

Best Answer

The preamble of your tabularx environment wasn't correct for what you want (you had one X column and 4 centred columns with their natural width). I took the liberty to replace the \hlines with rules from the booktabs package, which hace some vertical padding around them and a variable width, looking more ‘professional’:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{lmodern}
\usepackage{tabularx, booktabs}
\renewcommand{\tabularxcolumn}[1]{>{\centering\arraybackslash}p{#1}}

\begin{document}

\begin{table}[!ht]
  \begin{tabularx}{\linewidth}{*{4}{X}}
    \toprule
    \multicolumn{4}{c}{\Large Keywords}
    \\
    \midrule
    \\
    \large A & \large B & \large C & \large D \\\\
    1 & 2 & 3 & 4 \\
    \bottomrule
  \end{tabularx}
  \caption{test}\label{test}
\end{table}

\end{document}

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Table Errors – Misplaced \noalign, Misplaced \omit, extra alignment tabs

As is often the case all errors shown after the first are essentially spurious, the error is

\label{xxx}\caption{..}

which should be

\caption{....\label{..}}

\label always needs to be after the \caption if it is to label the correct value, but in tables it is particularly bad to use this form as you get an error not just the wrong value, as the label code prevents the caption spanning cells, as \multicolumn (used internally here) must always be the first thing in the cell.

I would never use tabularx for numeric data, just use longtable (or tabular for single page tables) and use dcolumn or siuintix packages to specify decimal alignment of the numeric data.

[Tex/LaTex] Tabularx and \hsize column tuning

It seems you want three equal-width columns (let's denote their width by x), plus another column that's one-third as wide as the other three; denote its width by y. The combined width of the four columns should equal \linewidth.

The computation is that of barycentric coordinates: you have to solve the linear system:

3x + y = 4 % 4: number of columns of type "X"
x = 3y

It is easy to find this yields y=0.4 and x=1.2, whence the code:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tabularx}
%% define a custom col. type to simplify expressing relative col. widths
\newcolumntype{H}[1]{>{\hsize=#1\hsize\arraybackslash}X}

\begin{document}

\begin{table}
\begin{tabularx}{\linewidth}{| H{0.4} | *{3}{H{1.2}|} } % 0.4+3*1.2=4
\hline
1&2&3&4\\
\hline
\end{tabularx}
\end{table}

\end{document}

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Table Errors – Misplaced \noalign, Misplaced \omit, extra alignment tabs

[Tex/LaTex] Tabularx and \hsize column tuning

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