Both \abovetopsep and \belowbottomsep are 0.0pt. But for some reason there's extra space between the bottom rule and "my second caption" in the table below.
Q: What is that space? Where does it come from?
Ultimately, I'd like to do the following:
\setlength{\abovetopsep}{<the width between the bottom rule and "my second caption">}
so that there's some uniformity in the vertical placement of captions above and below tabulars.
Q: Is there another, maybe more standard, method for doing this?
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{booktabs}
\begin{document}
\begin{table}
\centering
\caption{my first caption}
\begin{tabular}{ll}
\toprule
foo & bar \\
\midrule
baz & bog \\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}
\caption{my second caption}
\end{table}
\end{document}

booktabshas nothing to do with captions. – egreg Jan 22 '12 at 20:12tabularenvironment (and onetableenvironment) but two captions. What are you trying to achieve? One can assign labels to LaTeX captions, which can then be cross-referenced; are you trying to be able to create separate cross-references (e.g.,Table 1andTable 2) to the same floating object? Separately, you may want to develop a style for your paper(s) such that table captions are located either all above or all below the tabular material. – Mico Jan 23 '12 at 2:03tabular. I only intend to have my captions above thetabular. Sorry for the confusion. – brianjd Jan 23 '12 at 16:34