[Tex/LaTex] table too wide for twocolumn-mode document

horizontal alignmenttables

I have a table which comes outside the text column width into the margin of the paper. How do I make the text in the table align to left ?

 \documentclass[a4paper,10pt]{article}
 \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}

 \title{}
\author{}

\begin{document}

\maketitle

 \begin{abstract}
 abc
\end{abstract}

\section{table}
\begin{table}[h!]
\caption{Top 5 movies recommended by content-based CF algorithm} %title of the table
\centering
% centering table
\begin{tabular}{c r}
% creating eight columns
\hline\hline
%inserting double-line
Movies&\multicolumn{1}{c}{Genre} \\ [0.5ex]
\hline
% inserts single-line
The Flintstones(1994)
& Children's,Comedy\\
% Entering row contents
Son in Law(1974) & Comedy, Horror\\
The Princess Bride(1987) & Action, Adventure, Comedy, Romance\\
Star Wars(1977) & Action, Adventure, Romance, Sci-Fi, War\\
Toy Story(1995)
& Animated, Animated Children's, Comedy\\[1ex] % [1ex] adds vertical space
\hline
% inserts single-line
\end{tabular}
\label{tab:hresult}
\end{table}
 \end{document}


 This is how it looks :

enter image description here

Best Answer

Since you use two-column mode, you should use a table* rather than a table environment. The table* environment spans both columns. A restriction is that these floats can only appear at the top of a page.

enter image description here

By the way, I suggest you use the commands \toprule, \midrule, and \bottomrule of the booktabs package in the tabular environment, rather than \hline and various ad-hoc vertical spacing commands. The following modified form of your MWE shows how these commands may be used.

\documentclass[a4paper,10pt,twocolumn]{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{booktabs,lipsum}
\begin{document}
\lipsum[1-5] % filler text
\begin{table*}
\caption{Top 5 movies recommended by content-based CF algorithm} \label{tab:hresult}
\centering
\begin{tabular}{@{}ll@{}}
\toprule
Movies & Genre \\ 
\midrule
The Flintstones (1994) & Children's, Comedy\\
Son in Law (1974) & Comedy, Horror\\
The Princess Bride (1987) & Action, Adventure, Comedy, Romance\\
Star Wars (1977) & Action, Adventure, Romance, Sci-Fi, War\\
Toy Story (1995) & Animated, Animated Children's, Comedy\\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}
\end{table*}
\lipsum[6-14] % more filler text
\end{document}

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] How to center a too wide table

If a table (or any other horizontal box) is wider than the text (\textwidth) an overfull hbox warning is given and the content is placed anyway, which makes it run into the right margin. To avoid this and to suppress the error the content must be placed in a box with is equal or smaller than \textwidth. The \makebox macro with its two optional argument for the width and horizontal alignment can be used for this: \makebox[\textwidth][c]{<table>} will center the content. See Center figure that is wider than \textwidth and Place figures side by side, spill into outer margin were this is used for figures and further explained.

For more complicated tables, especially if they should contain verbatim material, you should use a different approach. \makebox reads the whole content as macro argument which does not allow verbatim content and is not very efficient (ok, nowadays the latter isn't really important any longer). The \Makebox macro or the Makebox environment from the realboxes can be used as an replacement. It reads the content as a box. Better would be the adjustbox macro or environment from the adjustbox package together with the center key.

\begin{adjustbox}{center}
<your table (i.e. the tabular or similar environment)>
\end{adjustbox}

Which centers the content to \linewidth (mostly identical to \textwidth) by default but also takes any other length as an optional value, e.g. center=10cm. Note that <your table> should be a tabular or equivalent environment, not a table environment.

You can now also use the tabular key of adjustbox (as first key!) to save the extra \begin{tabular} .. \end{tabular} which is then added internally.

\begin{adjustbox}{tabular=lll,center}
     a & b & c \\
     a & b & c \\
     a & b & c \\
\end{adjustbox}

[Tex/LaTex] Table with caption too wide for standalone package document

In your code, the problem arises because TeX tries to use the same font size (viz., \normalsize) for the tabular environment and the caption material. Because you're using the fairly narrow default value of \textwidth and, moreover, are using only 90% of that amount for the minipage, the table is simply too wide to fit in the space available.

I suggest you do the following: (i) use narrower column headers, (ii) reduce the value of the \tabcolsep parameter (which governs the width of the intercolumn space), (iii) don't use any whitespace at the start and end of the table, as well as (iv) use the dcolumn pacakge to align the numbers in four of the six data columns on the decimal points. With these changes, you'll get a table that uses the same font size for the caption and the contents of the tabular environment -- and fits into the text block.

enter image description here

\documentclass{standalone}
\usepackage[margin=1in]{geometry}
\usepackage{booktabs}
\usepackage{dcolumn}
\usepackage{caption}
\newcolumntype{z}{D{.}{.}{2.3}}

\newcommand{\mc}[1]{\multicolumn{1}{c}{#1}}

\addtolength{\tabcolsep}{-0.5pt}

\begin{document}
\begin{minipage}{\textwidth}
\begin{tabular}{@{}lzzlzzlzzl@{}}
\toprule
  Variable
  & \multicolumn{3}{c}{Model 1}
  & \multicolumn{3}{c}{Model 2}
  & \multicolumn{3}{c@{}}{Model 3}
\\
    \cmidrule(lr){2-4}
    \cmidrule(lr){5-7}
    \cmidrule(l){8-10}
%
    & \mc{Coeff} & \mc{Std Err} & $p$-value
    & \mc{Coeff} & \mc{Std Err} & $p$-value
    & \mc{Coeff} & \mc{Std Err} & $p$-value\\
\midrule
  Brand1:$\log p_t$
    & -3.44 & 0.226 & 2e-16***
    & -3.39 & 0.227 & 2e-16***
    & -3.27 & 0.231 & 2e-16***
\\
  Brand2:$\log p_t$
    & -2.67 & 0.250 & 2e-16***
    & -2.62 & 0.248 & 2e-16***
    & -2.61 & 0.248 & 2e-16***
\\
  Brand3:$\log p_t$
    & -4.45 & 0.413 & 2e-16***
    & -4.50 & 0.425 & 2e-16***
    & -4.43 & 0.427 & 2e-16***
\\
  Brand4:$\log p_t$
    & -2.34 & 0.607 & 1e-4***
    & -2.32 & 0.601 & 1e-4***
    & -2.38 & 0.599 & 9e-5***
\\
  Brand5:$\log p_t$
    & -3.92 & 0.536 & 2e-12***
    & -3.90 & 0.532 & 2e-12***
    & -3.86 & 0.530 & 2e-12***
\\[5pt]
  Brand1:$\log p_{t-1}$
    & & &
    & 0.435 & 0.227 & 0.056.
    & 0.518 & 0.229 & 0.024*
\\
  Brand2:$\log p_{t-1}$
    & & &
    & 0.226 & 0.248 & 0.362
    & 0.256 & 0.248 & 0.302
\\
  Brand3:$\log p_{t-1}$
    & & &
    & 1.024 & 0.410 & 0.012*
    & 1.078 & 0.423 & 0.011*
\\
  Brand4:$\log p_{t-1}$
    & & &
    & 0.547 & 0.602 & 0.364
    & 0.543 & 0.598 & 0.364
\\
  Brand5:$\log p_{t-1}$
    & & &
    & 0.151 & 0.532 & 0.777
    & 0.183 & 0.531 & 0.731
\\[5pt]
  Brand1:$\log p_{t-2}$
    & & &
    & & &
    & 0.465 & 0.231 & 0.045*
\\
  Brand2:$\log p_{t-2}$
    & & &
    & & &
    & 0.241 & 0.248 & 0.332
\\
  Brand3:$\log p_{t-2}$
    & & &
    & & &
    & 0.067 & 0.413 & 0.870
\\
  Brand4:$\log p_{t-2}$
    & & &
    & & &
    & -0.508 & 0.599 & 0.397
\\
  Brand5:$\log p_{t-2}$
    & & &
    & & &
    & 0.047 & 0.530 & 0.979
\\[5pt]
  Brand1:MAPE
    & \multicolumn{3}{c}{0.146}
    & \multicolumn{3}{c}{0.131}
    & \multicolumn{3}{c}{0.114}
\\
  Brand2:MAPE
    & \multicolumn{3}{c}{0.111}
    & \multicolumn{3}{c}{0.111}
    & \multicolumn{3}{c}{0.109}
\\
  Brand3:MAPE
    & \multicolumn{3}{c}{0.108}
    & \multicolumn{3}{c}{0.103}
    & \multicolumn{3}{c}{0.099}
\\
  Brand4:MAPE
    & \multicolumn{3}{c}{0.192}
    & \multicolumn{3}{c}{0.192}
    & \multicolumn{3}{c}{0.194}
\\
  Brand5:MAPE
    & \multicolumn{3}{c}{0.110}
    & \multicolumn{3}{c}{0.103}
    & \multicolumn{3}{c}{0.099}
\\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}
\captionof{table}{Regression results for 5 brands of coffee in a single store.}
\end{minipage}
\end{document}

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] How to center a too wide table

[Tex/LaTex] Table with caption too wide for standalone package document

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