[Tex/LaTex] Vertical spacing of a table cell

spacingtables

I want to tabulate formulas, but I find that the lines of the table cells are too close together, and this is aesthetically unsatisfactory. Example (formulae copied from wikipedia):

\begin{tabular}{|c|c|}
\hline
Cylindrical & $\displaystyle{{1 \over \rho}{\partial \over \partial\rho}\left(\rho {\partial f \over \partial \rho}\right)
+ {1 \over \rho^2}{\partial^2 f \over \partial \phi^2}  + {\partial^2 f \over \partial z^2}}$\\\hline
Spherical & $\displaystyle{{1 \over r^2}{\partial \over \partial r}\!\left(r^2 {\partial f \over \partial r}\right)
\!+\!{1 \over r^2\!\sin\theta}{\partial \over \partial \theta}\!\left(\sin\theta {\partial f \over \partial \theta}\right)
\!+\!{1 \over r^2\!\sin^2\theta}{\partial^2 f \over \partial \phi^2}}$\\\hline
\end{tabular}

gives this

table output

and you see that the top of the formulas are chopped by the lines. Suggestions?

Best Answer

I have solved this in the past by modifying the value of \arraystretch

you can do this by adding to your source :

{\renewcommand{\arraystretch}{1.2} %<- modify value to suit your needs
\begin{tabular}{|c|c|}
...
\end{tabular}
}

Edit:

Actually having researched this a bit more it seems that having equations in the cells has unexpected behaviour, where the space is increase disproportionally at the top (value set to 3 to start getting the space at the bottom):

tabular with arraystretch set to 3

more recently I have started to use the tabu package to replace all tables (from tabular to tabularx to longtable). It also provide a few more controls. in this case the \tabulinesep has a much more appropirate effect on the results:

\documentclass[preview]{standalone}
   \usepackage{tabu}
   \begin{document}
   {\tabulinesep=1.2mm
   \begin{tabu} {|c|c|}
       \hline
       Cylindrical & $\displaystyle{{1 \over \rho}{\partial \over \partial\rho}\left(\rho {\partial f \over \partial \rho}\right)
       + {1 \over \rho^2}{\partial^2 f \over \partial \phi^2}  + {\partial^2 f \over \partial z^2}}$\\\hline
       Spherical & $\displaystyle{{1 \over r^2}{\partial \over \partial r}\!\left(r^2 {\partial f \over \partial r}\right)
       \!+\!{1 \over r^2\!\sin\theta}{\partial \over \partial \theta}\!\left(\sin\theta {\partial f \over \partial \theta}\right)
       \!+\!{1 \over r^2\!\sin^2\theta}{\partial^2 f \over \partial \phi^2}}$\\\hline
   \end{tabu}}
\end{document}

which produces the following result:

tabu with tabulinesep set to 1.2mm

Related Question