Tabular environment column specification

Question

I am using the tabular environment.

\begin{table*}[ht]
\renewcommand{\arraystretch}{1.3}
{\small
\begin{center}
\begin{tabular}{|l||>{\centering\arraybackslash}m{1.6cm}|
  >{\centering\arraybackslash}m{1.6cm}|
  >{\centering\arraybackslash}m{1.6cm}|}
.
.

I would like to reduce the width of the first column in table. To do so if I use the below:

\begin{tabular}{|l{1.8cm}||
  >{\centering\arraybackslash}m{1.6cm}|
  >{\centering\arraybackslash}m{1.6cm}|
  >{\centering\arraybackslash}m{1.6cm}|}

I get an error

Package array Error:  Illegal pream-token (1.8cm): `c' used.

Am I missing something here? Is there a way to reduce the first column width in the above example?

Answer 1

The plain old left-aligned column l doesn't accept a width argument. If you want to specify its width, change it to m{1.8cm} as you did with your other columns. Of course, that will also word-wrap the text in that column if necessary.