How to create a table with a headline centered and columns centered?

Question

I use the following code to create a table with a centered headline.

\begin{tabularx}{\textwidth}{l|X}
  \multicolumn{2}{c}{Headline centered} \\
  \hline
  Column1 & Column2 which should be centered
\end{tabularx}

Now I would like to center the second column, too. But the tabularx package needs at least one column to be X and this column will not be centered.

How can I achieve this ?

Answer 1

Use l>{\centering\arraybackslash}X as your tabular preamble.

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In addition, something odd about your question struck me, you say tabularx needs an X column, which sort of implied that you don't need that?

You only need to use tabularx if you need X columns, that is multi-line entries that break to a width depending on other columns.

If your two columns are of the same type and both need single line entries do not use tabularx at all. Use

  \begin{tabular*}{\textwidth}{c@\extracolsep{\fill}}c}

tabular* is vastly more efficient than tabularx and does not require any package.

Answer 2

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tabularx,ragged2e}
\renewcommand\tabularxcolumn[1]{>{\Centering}p{#1}}
\begin{document}

\begin{tabularx}{\textwidth}{l|X}
  \multicolumn{2}{c}{Headline centered} \\
  \hline
  Column1 & Column2 which should be centered
\end{tabularx}

\end{document}

Answer 3

You can also use the package tabu:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tabu}
\begin{document}

\tabulinesep=3pt % For better spacing

\begin{tabu}to \textwidth {X[L]|X[C]}
  \multicolumn{2}{c}{Headline centered} \\
  \hline
  Column1 & Column2 which should be centered
\end{tabu}

\end{document}

If you want the second column to take remaining space, change the X[L] to an l (the letter, not the digit).

\begin{tabu}to \textwidth {X[L]|X[C]}