Help:Introduction to tables with Wiki Markup/2

Introduction to tables
How and why

Editing tables
The basics

Expanding tables
Adding rows and columns

Summary
Review of what you've learned


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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 table

This 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 table icon button will create. 

{| class="wikitable"
|+ Caption
|-
! Header C1 !! Header C2 !! Header C3
|-
| R1C1      || R1C2      || R1C3
|-
| R2C1      || R2C2      || R2C3
|}

Cells are arranged vertically

With 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:

Caption
Header C1 Header C2 Header C3
R1C1 R1C2 R1C3
R2C1 R2C2 R2C3


Full manual
VisualEditor tables