[Tex/LaTex] Create professional looking table description above table

captionstables

I'm searching for the 'best' method to create professional academic table descriptions above e.g. a regression table. I managed to create something as below, just wondering whether there is a prefered method to do so.

I currently put a \caption* environment below the regular \caption and change the font size.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{caption}
\usepackage{booktabs}

\begin{document}


\begin{table}[htbp]\centering
\def\sym#1{\ifmmode^{#1}\else\(^{#1}\)\fi}
\caption{This is the heading}
\caption*{\footnotesize Smaller note of table that describes what the table is all about.}
\begin{tabular}{l*{3}{c}}
\toprule
                &\multicolumn{1}{c}{(1)}   &\multicolumn{1}{c}{(2)}   &\multicolumn{1}{c}{(3)}   \\
                &     Base   &   Robust   &  Cluster   \\
\midrule
Size            &-0.000645   &-0.000645   &-0.000645   \\
                &  (-0.83)   &  (-0.83)   &  (-0.39)   \\
\midrule
Observations    &     5035   &     5035   &     5035   \\
\bottomrule
\multicolumn{4}{l}{\footnotesize \textit{t} statistics in parentheses}\\
\multicolumn{4}{l}{\footnotesize * p<0.10, ** p<0.05, *** p<0.01}\\
\end{tabular}
\end{table}


\end{document}

The result of the code above:

enter image description here

Best Answer

I wouldn't use a second caption, but expand on the description in the title and or move some of the description in the body of the text. Also if you have long table headings, using bold for the label font, it generally looks better.

enter image description here

Here is the code:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[labelfont={bf}]{caption}
\usepackage{booktabs,lipsum}
\begin{document}
\begin{table}[htbp]\centering
\def\sym#1{\ifmmode^{#1}\else\(^{#1}\)\fi}
\caption[Short Heading]{\protect\lipsum[1]}
\begin{tabular}{l*{3}{c}}
\toprule
                  &     Base   &   Robust   &  Cluster   \\
                    &\multicolumn{1}{c}{(1)}   &\multicolumn{1}{c}{(2)}   &\multicolumn{1}{c}{(3)}   \\
\midrule
Size            &-0.000645   &-0.000645   &-0.000645   \\
                &  (-0.83)   &  (-0.83)   &  (-0.39)   \\
\midrule
Observations    &     5035   &     5035   &     5035   \\
\bottomrule
\multicolumn{4}{l}{\footnotesize \textit{t} statistics in parentheses}\\
\multicolumn{4}{l}{\footnotesize * p<0.10, ** p<0.05, *** p<0.01}\\
\end{tabular}
\end{table}
\end{document}

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Professional-looking tables with alternating row colors

Zebra stripes – as they’re called – may sometimes be better than nothing, but it’s still bad table design. See this discussion on Edward Tufte’s Web forum, which references a chapter in his book Envisioning Information (which doesn’t actually have any dicussion on zebra stripes in tables, but is still a wonderful book).

The problem zebra stripes tries to solve is that cell contents of neighbouring columns are too far apart, making it difficult to follow the content along rows. Here’s my list of suggestions for improving a table where you think you need zebra stripes, roughly in order.

Abbreviate the column headers. Often the content cells contain little information, e.g., a two-digit number, but the wide column header cells make the column much too wide.
If you can’t abbreviate the column header, split it into two (or more) rows.
Slightly rotate the column headers, perhaps 20 degrees, so they don’t take up much horizontal space. How to do this is LaTeX is a separate question. :)
Sometimes you can actually just get rid of the entire header row, as the meaning of each column is obvious.
Add extra space between rows, so that the rows actually feel like separate rows. You usually don’t need much extra space.
Add small, vertically centred horizontal leader dots between or inside the cells. This is especially useful if some of the cells are empty. How to best do this in LaTeX is of course also a separate question.
A combination of some or all of the above.

If, and only if, the above doesn’t help, i.e., you need long column headings, with narrow or empty content cells, large intercolumn space, and you need to conserve vertical space, then you may consider using zebra stripes, knowing that it’s still bad table design. Luckily, there are actually a few tricks you can use to reduce the damage:

Use spans of rows with the same colour, which look much better than simply alternating zebra stripes. For example, colour rows 1–3 light blue, rows 4–6 white, rows 6–9 light blue, rows 10–12 white, etc. This greatly reduces the problem of seemingly flickering rows. When using three rows, it’s easy to recognise the first, middle and last row in each ‘group’, and much harder to ‘get lost’ (i.e., read the wrong row when moving between columns) than when using simply alternating row colours. Groups of five also work well.
Note that the important thing here is grouping of rows into three or five rows. And you don’t actually need colours for that! Just separate the groups with some vertical whitespace or a very faint or dotted lightly coloured horizontal line.
Make the two background colours very light or similar. The blue one used in your example is too dark, IMHO. But when lightening the colour, do print the document to make sure the light blue colour is still visibly different from white, as many printers aren’t very good at printing very light colours.

The largest problem with the grouping above is that you visually imply a logical grouping that just doesn’t exist. That’s one good reason to avoid zebra stripes. And, as shown earlier in my answer, they aren’t even necessary, so do avoid them if you appreciate good table design.

[Tex/LaTex] Create a table with three columns above two columns

You can use two tabular-like environments; in the first example below I kept the vertical rules; in the second one I removed them and used the features provided by the booktabs package:

\documentclass[a4paper,10pt]{article}
\usepackage{booktabs}
\usepackage{tabularx}

\begin{document}

\noindent\begin{tabularx}{\textwidth}{|X|X|X|}  \hline
  Date: 16/12/11 & Ref:  Title & Rev: No.\\  
\end{tabularx}\offinterlineskip

\noindent\begin{tabularx}{\textwidth}{|X|X|}  \hline
  Author: Author Name & Client:  Company Name\\ \hline
\end{tabularx}

\vspace{1cm}

\noindent\begin{tabularx}{\textwidth}{@{}XXX@{}}  \toprule
  Date: 16/12/11 & Ref:  Title & Rev: No.\\  
\end{tabularx}\offinterlineskip

\noindent\begin{tabularx}{\textwidth}{@{}XX@{}}  \midrule
  Author: Author Name & Client:  Company Name\\ \bottomrule
\end{tabularx}

\end{document}

enter image description here

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Professional-looking tables with alternating row colors

[Tex/LaTex] Create a table with three columns above two columns

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