# Vertical lines going beyond the borders of my table

I am very new to LaTeX so please excuse the amateur question. I am creating a table using the following commands:

\begin{table}[ht!]
\small
\centering
\caption{Effect of industry on \emph{Bad Self Impact} by value of \emph{Cultural Sentiment}}.
\begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|c|}\\
\hline
Value of \emph{Cultural Sentiment}  & Coefficient on \emph{Import Industry}  & P-value & Observations\\ \hline
Positive & 0.234 (-0.108, 0.577) & 0.179 & 1995\\ \hline
Neutral & 0.607 (0.267, 0.947) & 0.000 & 1040\\ \hline
Negative & -0.099 (-0.485, 0.288) & 0.616 & 703\\ \hline
\end{tabular}\\
\end{table}


But the result looks like this, with two lines on the top left of the table jutting out beyond its borders. How do I get rid of them?

• not sure why my commands are all on one line, by the way. that is not how i entered them in the compiler. – Shayda Mar 19 '14 at 17:35
• delete the \\  after \begin{tabular} – David Carlisle Mar 19 '14 at 17:35
• Welcome to tex.sx, when adding code sections highlight them and use the {} button in the editor which formats them in a text block (see my edit). – David Carlisle Mar 19 '14 at 17:37
• @DavidCarlisle an answer? :) – cmhughes Mar 19 '14 at 19:00

Delete the \\ after \begin{tabular} It is causing an empty row ended after the first cell, which explains the vertical lines.
You should also delete the \\ after the \end{tabular} (\\ outside alignments are almost always wrong)