Introduction to tables
How and why
Editing tables
The basics
Expanding tables
Adding rows and columns
Summary
Review of what you've learned
Whether you've just inserted a new table, or are editing an existing one, changing the text in the table cells determines what the table looks like to a reader. But you can do more than just change text.
A table consists of the following basic elements, all of which you can modify:
{|
|
start | Besides beginning the table, this is also where the table's class is defined – for example, class="wikitable". A table's "class" applies standard Wikipedia formatting to that table. The two most commonly used classes are "wikitable" and "wikitable sortable"; the latter allows the reader to sort the table by clicking on the header cell of any column.
|
|---|---|---|
|+
|
caption | Required for accessibility purposes on data tables, and placed only between the table start and the first table row. |
!
|
header cell | Optional. Each header cell starts with a new line and a single exclamation mark (!), or several header cells can be placed consecutively on the same line, separated by double exclamation marks (!!).
|
|-
|
new row | To begin a new row of cells, use a single vertical bar (|) and a hyphen (-).
|
|
|
new cell in row |
To add a new cell in a row, start each new cell with a new line and a single vertical bar (|), or several cells can be placed consecutively on the same line, separated by double vertical bars (||).
|
|}
|
end | To end the table, use a single vertical bar (|) and a left facing curly brace (}) alone on a new line.
|
Blank spaces at the beginning and end of a cell are ignored.
Layout
When you edit an existing table, you'll probably see one of two common ways that the table is laid out:
Data is arranged like a tableThis is useful when there aren't too many columns and the cell contents are short (e.g. just numbers). This is the markup layout that the {| class="wikitable"
|+ Caption
|-
! Header C1 !! Header C2 !! Header C3
|-
| R1C1 || R1C2 || R1C3
|-
| R2C1 || R2C2 || R2C3
|}
|
Cells are arranged verticallyWith lots of columns, or cells with long contents, putting each cell on a new line can improve readability of the markup. {| class="wikitable"
|+ Caption
|-
! Header C1
! Header C2
! Header C3
|-
| R1C1
| R1C2
| R1C3
|-
| R2C1
| R2C2
| R2C3
|}
|
To a reader, both of the above examples will look the same:
| Header C1 | Header C2 | Header C3 |
|---|---|---|
| R1C1 | R1C2 | R1C3 |
| R2C1 | R2C2 | R2C3 |
