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This guideline is a part of the English Wikipedia's Manual of Style.

It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though occasional exceptions may apply. Any substantive edit to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page.

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Tables can be useful for a variety of content presentation on Wikipedia. This page discusses where it makes sense to use tables. For details on how to create tables using wiki markup, see Help:Table.

When tables are appropriate

Tables are perfect for organizing any information that is best presented in a row-and-column format. This might include:

Mathematical tables
- Multiplication tables
- Tables of divisors
- Lookup tables
Lists of information
- Equivalent words in two or more languages
- Person, birthdate, occupation
- Artist, album, year, and label

Before you format a list in table form, consider whether the information will be more clearly delineated with headings categorically in a statistical manner. If so, then a table is probably a good choice. If not, then a table is probably not the best choice.

Examples

Year Album

1980 Ultra Wave

1988 What's Bootsy Doin'?

1994 Blasters of the Universe

Fresh Outta 'P' University

When tables may not be appropriate

Visual features

Try not to use tables for putting a caption under a photograph, arranging a group of links, or other strictly visual features.

Rationales

It makes the article harder to edit for other Wikipedians
Templates, wikitext, and code are more efficient ways of desktop pusblishing.

Prose

When information cannot be categorized, use one of the standard Wikipedia list formats.

Rationale

Uncategorized information, such as prose, should not be put into tables because there is no relationship between the cells for headings to be appelled.

Examples

{{{Biography}}}

Jack was born in 1948 in Poland.

{{{Event}}}

Jack went up the hill with Jill on Father's day.

Layout of images

Often images are placed in an article by using a quirk of table rendering. Because a table can be floated to the left or right side of the screen, it has become common practice to use a simple one-celled table to place an image in a particular part of the screen. This was a necessary workaround for old browsers, since it generates a consistent rendering of images in browsers which do not adequately support Cascading Style Sheets. However, by far the majority of browsers in use today should do just fine with style sheets. The recommended practice now is to arrange images using an element called div.

For detailed instructions, see Wikipedia:Image use policy and the Wikipedia:Extended image syntax. Here's a brief example:

Table formatting (Do not do this)

<table align="right" border="0" cellpadding="0"><tr><td>[[Image:Covalent.png]]</td></tr></table>

Without tables (Do this instead)

[[Image:Covalent.png|right]]

How it looks

In both of these cases, the result is essentially the same; the image is floated to the right-hand side of the screen, and the surrounding text wraps around it. Here is what it looks like in your browser (with text added):

Covalent bonding is a form of chemical bonding characterized by the sharing of one or more pairs of electrons between atoms, in order to produce a mutual attraction, which holds the resultant molecule together. Atoms tend to share electrons in such a way that their outer electron shells are filled. Such bonds are always stronger than the intermolecular hydrogen bond and similar in strength to or stronger than the ionic bond.
Covalent bonding most frequently occurs between atoms with similar (high) electronegativities, where to completely remove an electron from one atom requires too much energy. Covalent bonds are more common between non-metals, whereas ionic bonding is more common between a metal atom and a non-metal atom.
Covalent bonding tends to be stronger than other types of bonding, such as ionic bonding. Unlike ionic bonds, where ions are held together by a non-directional coulombic attraction, covalent bonds are highly directional. As a result, covalently bonded molecules tend to form in a relatively small number of characteristic shapes, exhibiting specific bonding angles.

Visual layout

Multiple columns, positioning, borders, and so on should be done with CSS—not tables—when possible.

Table Coding — Reduce clutter

Where a table is genuinely necessary and desired, use the preformatted class="wikitable" format, or one of the related formats, instead of manually coding a complex HTML table directly in the article. This will make the table, and the article itself, much easier for other people to edit in the future.

When tables are appropriate

Examples

When tables may not be appropriate

Visual features

Rationales

Prose

Rationale

Examples

{{{Biography}}}

{{{Event}}}

Layout of images

Table formatting (Do not do this)

Without tables (Do this instead)

How it looks

Visual layout

Table Coding — Reduce clutter

See also