math size in a table

Question

I have a long table and I want to fit it in one page. Table has number and symbol entries. The size to the table can be reduced if I can reduce the font size. How can I reduce the font size in this case? I tried:

\begin{tabular}{|{\small}c|c|c|c} \end{tabular}

but it does not work for math.

Answer 1

rather than trying to shrink each element of the table separately, you might consider setting the table to its "normal" size with attractive spacing, then using \scalebox{<scaling factor>}{<table content>} to shrink the whole thing at one go. this requires the graphicx package and works equally well for all manner of items that need to be resized.

Code:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{graphicx}

\newcommand*{\MyTable}{%
\begin{tabular}{|c c|} \hline
    foo & a  \\
    $\sum = mc^2$ & $\int_0^1 f(x)$ \\\hline
\end{tabular}%
}%

\begin{document}
\MyTable
\hspace{0.5cm}
\scalebox{0.8}{\MyTable}
\end{document}

Answer 2

Put \small outside tabular. Here, \bgroup and \egroup are included to limit the scope of the size change to the table.

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
Ordinary text

\bgroup\small
\begin{tabular}{c|c}
goat & $a=b$ \\
$c=d$& pig
\end{tabular}
\egroup
\end{document}

Using \tiny in place of \small to emphasise the effect, the result is as shown.

Answer 3

You may try the relsize package. It has commands \smaller, \larger and etc. that can be used inside many environments, or with braces in the document body, like: \smaller{your table}. The command accepts an argument for different sizes, e.g. \smaller[2]