How can I align the contents of a multirow cell top the top?
Here's an MWE:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{array,multirow,booktabs,fullpage}
\begin{document}\begin{center}
\begin{tabular}{c>{\bfseries}l>{\itshape}clc>{\bfseries}l>{\itshape}cl}
\toprule
\multirow{1}{*}{\LARGE\bfseries A} & foo & n. & lorem ipsum dolor sit &
\multirow{1}{*}{\LARGE\bfseries B} & foo & n. & consectetur adipiscing elit \\
& bar & v. & Maecenas sed purus & & bar & v. & at ipsum placerat luctus \\
& baz & p. & Nullam luctus id tellus & & baz & p. & Ut ac ultricies neque \\
& qux & v. & Aenean consequat commodo & & qux & v. & in sodales metus ultrices \\
& buux & n. & Phasellus tincidunt & & quux & n. & vitae pulvinar nisi mollis \\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}\end{center}\end{document}
As you can see, what I've done is use the multirow command, but only set a row span of 1. This more or less gets me what I want: "hanging" letters, but with a couple of costs. First, I get a lot of Overfull \vbox warnings. The second is that the tops of the large letters are not actually precisely aligned:
Best Answer
I just uploaded a new version of multirow to CTAN. It should be available in a few days. If you want it now, just send me an email (you can find a working email address in multirow.sty).
With the new version you can give a positioning parameter [t] to \multirow to give it a top alignment. However, this will align the baselines of the letters, not the top. To align the tops you have to give it a fixup argument, that is the difference of the heights of the A and the f. This can be done as follows:
and then