[Tex/LaTex] How to center the whole tabular, center the header line cells, and have some space after it

floatshorizontal alignmentspacingtables

I have a few questions about tables that are probably pretty basic. Here is the code for my table.

\begin{table}
  \begin{tabular}{| r | l | l |}
    \hline
    \textbf{Species} & \textbf{Abbrev.} & \textbf{Common Name} \\ \hline
    \textit{Arabidopsis thaliana} & At & Thale cress \\
    \textit{Oryza sativa} & Os & Rice \\
    \textit{Brachypodium distachyon} & Bd & Purple false brome \\
    \textit{Glycine max} & Gm & Soybean \\
    \textit{Vitis vinifera} & Vv & Grape \\
    \textit{Sorghum bicolor} & Sb & Sorghum \\
    \textit{Medicago truncatula} & Mt & Barrel clover \\
    \textit{Zea mays} & Zm & Maize \\ \hline
  \end{tabular}
  \caption{This study presents a comprehensive analysis of the intron distribution in these 8 model plant species.}
\end{table}

Here are my questions.

  1. How can I change the alignment of the first row of headers (center) without affecting the alignment of the subsequent rows?
  2. How can I add space between the bottom of the table and the caption? The caption text is right up against the bottom of the table.
  3. How can I horizontally center this table in the available space? I tried the \begin{center} environment but that did not work.

Best Answer

  1. It's a bit of a hack, but you could use the multirow package, and just use a multicolumn with colspan 1 that centers its content.

  2. Why not just add another table row? Again, using the multirow package you can alter the column separators for a single row - in this case removing them and just adding a row of whitespace.

  3. Add \centering at the top of your table float:

    \begin{table}
\centering
...
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