HTML Syntax

<table align=alignment cellpadding=number cellspacing=number width=length>

   ... table definition elements ...

</table>

NOTE: Both start and end tags are required.

The <table> element specifies a container for arranging content into rows and columns of cells.

<table> elements are always used with the <tr> element to define the table rows, and the <th> or <td> elements to define the table cells.

<th> elements define row or column headings, and <td> elements define the cells for the table data.

A table can also contain a <caption> element, which provides a label of the table’s purpose.

A table can have a specified width, and browsers render the table to fit the specified dimensions when possible.

In cases where the specified sizes will not fit, as when the table may have cells that contain long non-wrapping lines, the browser adjusts the table size accordingly.

The cols attribute can be used to specify the number of equal-width columns in the table. Specifying this attribute can speed up the processing of a table.

To control spacing between and within cells, authors can use cellspacing to specify the distance between cells, and cellpadding to specify the distance between the border and content of each cell.

NOTE: The align, cellpadding, cellspacing and width attributes have been deprecated in HTML5 in favor of CSS style sheets.

The following example shows how the <table> element may be used.

<table table align="center" border>
<thead>
<tr>
   <th>Heading 1</th>
   <th>Heading 2</th>
</tr>
<tbody>
<tr>
   <td>Row 1, Column 1 text.</td>
   <td>Row 1, Column 2 text.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
   <td>Row 2, Column 1 text.</td>
   <td>Row 2, Column 2 text.</td>
</tr>
</table>

which would render on a Web page as follows:

• 4.9.1 The table element

TBODY   TD   TFOOT   THEAD   TH   TR   Using Tables