Two tables side by side in two column document

floatsminipagetables

I need two tables to be placed on top of the page and side by side in a two-column document. Each table should have its own caption, in its own column, and needs to be nicely centered to its column.

So I tried this:

\begin{figure*}
  \centering
  \begin{minipage}{0.3\textwidth}
    \centering
    \begin{tabular}[c]{|c|c|}
      \hline
      1 & 2 \\
      \hline
      3 & 4 \\
      \hline
    \end{tabular}
    \captionof{table}{table 1}
  \end{minipage}
  \begin{minipage}{0.3\textwidth}
    \centering
    \begin{tabular}[c]{|c|c|}
      \hline
      1 & 2 \\
      \hline
      3 & 4 \\
      \hline
    \end{tabular}
    \captionof{table}{table 2}
  \end{minipage}
\end{figure*}

And what it does is actually putting two small minpages at the center of the whole document regardless of any column geometry.

Since I previously used subfigure and I know they nicely center in such scenarios I also tried:

\begin{figure*}
  \begin{subfigure}{0.49\textwidth}
    \centering
    \begin{tabular}[c]{|c|c|}
      \hline
      1 & 2 \\
      \hline
      3 & 4 \\
      \hline
    \end{tabular}
    \caption{table 1}
  \end{subfigure}%
  \hspace*{\fill}
  \begin{subfigure}{0.49\textwidth}
    \centering
    \begin{tabular}[c]{|c|c|}
      \hline
      1 & 2 \\
      \hline
      3 & 4 \\
      \hline
    \end{tabular}
    \caption{table 2}
  \end{subfigure}
\end{figure*}

The ugly part is that I cannot have separate table captions that way (to the best of my knowledge, I cannot put table in figure). Nor can I use captionof{table} in the figure environment.

All in all, what do you suggest? How to have them nicely centered but still to have two separate table captions?

Why Mico's answer does not work? Seems like tables are not always centered.

\documentclass[twocolumn]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\begin{document}
\begin{table*}
  \begin{minipage}{\columnwidth}
    \centering
    \hrule
    \resizebox{\columnwidth}{!}{%
      \begin{tabular}{|c|c|}
        \hline 1 & 2 \\ \hline 3 & 4 \\ \hline
      \end{tabular}
    }
    \caption{table 1}
  \end{minipage}\hfill % maximize the horizontal separation
  \begin{minipage}{\columnwidth}
    \centering
    \hrule
    \resizebox{\columnwidth}{!}{%
      \begin{tabular}{|c|c|}
        \hline 1 & 2 \\ \hline 3 & 4 \\ \hline
      \end{tabular}
    }
    \caption{table 2}
  \end{minipage}
\end{table*}

\lipsum[1-15] % filler text
\end{document}

micos_example

Mico provided the solution to this problem; add % after each tabular. The idea is to suppress the space after tabular. That spacing does not work well with \resizebox. For more details see the comments to Mico's answer.

Best Answer

I suggest you use a table* environment (not a figure* environment), 2 minipage environments (each of width \columnwidth) within the table* environment, and centered tabular environments and \caption directives within each minipage.

enter image description here

\documentclass[twocolumn]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\begin{document}
\begin{table*}
\begin{minipage}{\columnwidth}
    \centering
    \begin{tabular}{|c|c|}
      \hline 1 & 2 \\ \hline 3 & 4 \\ \hline
    \end{tabular}
    \caption{table 1}
\end{minipage}\hfill % maximize the horizontal separation
\begin{minipage}{\columnwidth}
    \centering
    \begin{tabular}{|c|c|}
      \hline 1 & 2 \\ \hline 3 & 4 \\ \hline
    \end{tabular}
    \caption{table 2}
  \end{minipage}
\end{table*}

\lipsum[1-15] % filler text
\end{document}
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