Table caption without the word “table”

Question

Whenever I put

\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}
...
\end{tabular}
\caption{My great table}
\end{table}

It would end up with the name "Table 1: My great table". I don't want the prefix "Table 1:". Is there a way to suppress it?

Answer 1

I recommend you to use the \caption* command from the caption package:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{caption}
\begin{document}
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{ll}
1 & 2
\end{tabular}
\caption*{My great table}
\end{table}
\end{document}

As @egreg suggests there's also the possibility to do it using the \captionsetup command:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{caption}
\captionsetup{labelformat=empty}
\begin{document}
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{ll}
1 & 2
\end{tabular}
\caption{My great table}
\end{table}
\end{document}

Doing so you don't always need to use *.

The solution you're using depends on what you're trying to achieve. The second one adds your table to the list of tables whereas \caption* does not. (Thanks @Herbert)