How to create fixed width table columns with text raggedright/centered/raggedleft?

Question

I would like to create a table with some columns' width specified, while the text in those columns should be centered both horizontally and vertically. I found out that

\usepackage{array}
\begin{tabular}{| c | c | m{5cm} |}

vertically centers the text in the last column, but justifies it horizontally (like text in normal paragraphs).

Update: With Jake's method, it seems both \\ and \hline cause an error. How to fix it?

Answer 1

A comprehensive solution (based on this answer) is to define new column types (say, L, C, and R) that take their width as argument and do the following:

• Issue \raggedright, \centering, or \raggedleft to achieve the desired horizontal alignment,

• Declare \let\newline\\ to allow to use \newline for manual line breaks within a cell (note that \centering & friends change the meaning of \\ -- this is the problem with Jake's solution),

• Issue \arraybackslash (i.e., \let\\\tabularnewline) to allow (again) to use \\ for ending rows,

• Issue \hspace{0pt} to allow the first word in a cell to be hyphenated.

In the example below, the new column types are based on (vertically centered) m-columns, but one may use (top- or bottom-aligned) p- or b-columns as well.

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{array}
\newcolumntype{L}[1]{>{\raggedright\let\newline\\\arraybackslash\hspace{0pt}}m{#1}}
\newcolumntype{C}[1]{>{\centering\let\newline\\\arraybackslash\hspace{0pt}}m{#1}}
\newcolumntype{R}[1]{>{\raggedleft\let\newline\\\arraybackslash\hspace{0pt}}m{#1}}

\begin{document}

\begin{tabular}{| c | L{3cm} | C{3cm} | R{3cm} |}
foo &
A cell with text that wraps around, is raggedright and allows \newline
    manual line breaks &
A cell with text that wraps around, is centered and allows \newline
    manual line breaks &
A cell with text that wraps around, is raggedleft and allows \newline
    manual line breaks \\
\end{tabular}

\end{document}

Answer 2

The 'm' column type only centers the text vertically; to get it also centered horizontally, you can use the >{cmd} syntax, which adds a command before each cell in the specified column:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{array}
\begin{document}
\begin{tabular}{| c | c | >{\centering}m{5cm} |}
Abc & Bcd & A long cell with text that wraps around and is centered
\end{tabular}
\end{document}

As Stefan Kottwitz pointed out in his comment, this can also be be wrapped in a new column type that you can define using

\newcolumntype{C}[1]{>{\centering}m{#1}}

Then you can define the above table using

begin{tabular}{| c | c | C{5cm} |}

Answer 3

I found a very different technique that also works:

With the package ragged2e you can issue the command \RaggedRight outside the tabular environment and get ragged right inside p- or m-columns of a tabular environment.

Here is an example document:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{array}
\usepackage{ragged2e}
\begin{document}
{\RaggedRight
    \begin{tabular}{| c | m{3cm}}
    foo &
A cell with text that wraps around, is raggedright and allows \newline
manual line breaks \\ 
\end{tabular}
}% end of \RaggedRight
\end{document}

Answer 4

It’s easy peasy to specify the horizontal and vertical alignment of table cells at the same time with tblr environment of the new LaTeX3 package tabularray:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tabularray}
\begin{document}
\begin{tblr}{|Q[l,t,3cm]|Q[c,m,3cm]|Q[r,b,3cm]|}
\hline
 {Top Baseline \\ Left Left} & Middle Center & {Right Right \\ Bottom Baseline} \\
\hline
\end{tblr}
\end{document}

You can even remove the width settings of the columns to use the natural widths.