Vertical space around table

Question

I'm using tabu to create a table. I wish this to be center-displayed, so I am using it as follows:

Body of text preceding table.

\begin{center}
\begin{tabu}{llX}
text & text & text
\end{tabu}
\end{center}

Body of text following table.

I would like the space between the surrounding text and the table to match that of displayed equations, arrays, and theorems. I can add line breaks or \smallskips, but I think this is pretty unstable, and produces varying results from page to page. Any standard way of achieving this look?

Incidentally, I'm only using tabu because I want an array where one of the entries "stretches" to the end of the line. Perhaps there's a better way to do that?

Thanks.

Answer 1

You might try the flalign environment, if you have equations. If you want tabu, do

text before the display
\[
\begin{tabu}{llX}
...
\end{tabu}
\]
text after the display

The important thing is not having a blank line between the text above the display and \[. After \] there may be a blank line or not, depending on whether the text starts a new paragraph.