Control spacing around table caption

Question

I want to put several tables in the same table float like this:

\documentclass[a4paper, 12pt]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{subfig}
\begin{document}

\begin{table}

\caption{Internal exon scores}\label{tab:internal}
\begin{tabular}{|c|l|l|}
\hline
Ranking&Exon Coverage&Splice Site Support\\
\hline
E1&Complete coverage by a single transcript&Both splice sites\\
E2&Complete coverage by more than a single transcript&Both splice sites\\
E3&Partial coverage&Both splice sites\\
E4&Partial coverage&One splice site\\
E5&Complete or partial coverage&No splice sites\\
E6&No coverage&No splice sites\\
\hline
\end{tabular}

\caption{External exon scores}\label{tab:external}
\begin{tabular}{|c|l|l|}
\hline
Ranking&Exon Coverage&Internal Splice Site Coverage\\
\hline
X1&Complete coverage by one or more transcripts&Splice site covered\\
X2&Exon coverage >= 80\%&Splice site covered\\
X3&Exon coverage < 80\%&Splice site covered\\
X4&Exon coverage < 80\%&Splice site not covered\\
X5&No coverage&Splice site not covered\\
\hline
\end{tabular}

\end{table}
\end{document}

When I build the document, table 2's caption is closer to the bottom of table 1, which makes things confusing. hspace{} doesn't seem to work in the table environment. I've worked out that the subfloat package appears to be causing the spacing behaviour of the captions. Is there anything else that I can do to introduce a blank horizontal break to space out the captions?

Answer 1

The spacing is caused by the caption package, which is loaded by subfig. You can adjust the two parameters aboveskip and belowskip provided by caption using something like \captionsetup{belowskip=12pt,aboveskip=4pt} in your preamble. Note that below and above have the meaning as it would make sense for figure captions below a figure: aboveskip is the space between the content and the caption (which would be above the caption for a figure caption that's set underneath the figure, but below it for a table caption that's set above the table), belowskip is the space between the caption and the surrounding text.

Here's your example with the aboveskip and belowskip adjusted:

\documentclass[a4paper, 12pt]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{subfig}

\captionsetup{belowskip=12pt,aboveskip=4pt}
\begin{document}

\begin{table}

\caption{Internal exon scores}\label{tab:internal}
\begin{tabular}{|c|l|l|}
\hline
Ranking&Exon Coverage&Splice Site Support\\
\hline
E1&Complete coverage by a single transcript&Both splice sites\\
E2&Complete coverage by more than a single transcript&Both splice sites\\
E3&Partial coverage&Both splice sites\\
E4&Partial coverage&One splice site\\
E5&Complete or partial coverage&No splice sites\\
E6&No coverage&No splice sites\\
\hline
\end{tabular}

\caption{External exon scores}\label{tab:external}
\begin{tabular}{|c|l|l|}
\hline
Ranking&Exon Coverage&Internal Splice Site Coverage\\
\hline
X1&Complete coverage by one or more transcripts&Splice site covered\\
X2&Exon coverage >= 80\%&Splice site covered\\
X3&Exon coverage < 80\%&Splice site covered\\
X4&Exon coverage < 80\%&Splice site not covered\\
X5&No coverage&Splice site not covered\\
\hline
\end{tabular}

\end{table}
\end{document}

Answer 2

Since you use subfig, you can adjust this by \captionsetup of the caption package, for example:

\captionsetup[table]{aboveskip=0pt}
\captionsetup[table]{belowskip=10pt}

With these adjustments, you will get this output:

Answer 3

without loading another package use

\usepackage{subfig}

\let\belowcaptionskip\abovecaptionskip