In general, it is recommended that tables simply use Wikipedia's default formatting. In some circumstances, however, you may need to apply some more complicated formatting using CSS. The appearance of each cell can be controlled by adding style=" " | before the cell's contents. CSS formatting is added to headings and captions in the same way.
For cell contents
| style="" | R1C1
| style="" | R1C2
| style="" | R1C3
|
|
For headings
! style="" | Header C1
! style="" | Header C2
! style="" | Header C3
|
Any CSS attributes can be added in the style=" " |.
Most commonly used attributes
| Property
|
Meaning
|
Example
|
| background
|
back ground fill |
background:yellow
|
| color
|
text colour |
color:blue
|
| width
|
cell width |
width:100px
|
| border-width
|
border width |
border-width:3px
|
| text-align
|
Text alignment within cell |
text-align:center
|
As an example, here's an example with some varied formatting added to specific cells
{| class="wikitable"
|+ Caption: some cells yellow.
|-
! Header1
! Header2
! Header3
|-
| style="background: yellow" | R1C1
| R1C2
| style="background: yellow" | R1C3
|-
| R2C1
| style="background: yellow" | R2C2
| R2C3
|}
Then it would produce this:
Caption: some cells yellow.
| Header1
|
Header2
|
Header3
|
| R1C1
|
R1C2
|
R1C3
|
| R2C1
|
R2C2
|
R2C3
|
CSS attributes can be added to the whole table by editing the first line of the table using {| style=" " in the first line. Similarly, attributes can be added to a row using |- style=" " The example below would fill the whole table yellow.
{| class="wikitable" style="background: yellow"
All of these formatting options should be used sparingly. Tables in crazy colours are hard to read.
In complicated tables, sometimes hidden comments can be useful to explain formatting. These hidden comments are only visible when editing the page, not when reading it normally. Comments can be added by placing them between <!-- and -->.
| R1C1 || R1C2 ||R1C3 <!-- Hidden comment to explain this row -->
