Need help for tabularx table

Question

I need some help regarding formatting a table in tabularx (I'm only allowed to use tabularx). I'm encountering some problems and I can't diagnose the issue as this is the first time I am using Latex.

This is the code which I written so far:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{amssymb}
\usepackage{tabularx}
\usepackage{multirow}
\begin{document}

\begin{table}[htbp]
\centering
\caption{This is a table}
\begin{tabularx}{\textwidth}{|X|c|c|c|c|c|c|c|c|} \hline

\multirow{2}{*}{xxxxxx} & \multirow{2}{*}{xxxxxx} & \multicolumn{2}{c|}    {xxxxx xxxx} & \multicolumn{5}{c|}{xxxxxxxxxx}     \\ \cline{3-9}

 &  & xxxxxxxx  & xxxxxxxxxxx   & xxxxxxxx & xxxxx  & xxxxxxxxx & \multicolumn{2}{c|}{xxxxx} \\ \hline

xxxxxxx et al. (1900) & xxxxx & \multicolumn{2}{c|}{xxxxxx} & xxxxxxxxx & xxxxxx & xxx & $\thicksim$x km & for x = 0.1 \\ \cline{8-9}

& & & & & & & $\thicksim$y km & for x = 0.2 \\ \cline{8-9}

& & & & & & & $\thicksim$z km & for x = 0.3 \\ \cline{8-9}

\end{tabularx}
\end{table}
\end{document}

I got the result as shown below (the first 2 rows are headers):

The problems I faced for this table were:

1) How do I remove the blank spaces along the columns which are not affected by the cline function?

2) The first column contains a citation. How can I make the author's name wrap within the cell? This is circled in blue

3) For the cells circled in red, how can I shift them up, so that they are just below the ~x km for x = 0.1 row?

4) How can I get rid of the | vertical separators between the third and fourth columns after the top 2 header rows??

Thank you all in advance.

Regards Corse

Answer 1

You have to make your data fit in the space, tabularx isn't really going to help with that, so I used a normal tabular (you could use tabularx and just not use its features but that just slows things down)

as xxxxxx is never going to automatically hyphenate I added hyphenation points by hand (\-) (and changed a few x to other random letters so I could see which entry was which). This still has a couple of slightly over-full entries, but more or less fits. in the page.

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{amssymb}
\usepackage{tabularx}
\usepackage{multirow}
\begin{document}


\noindent X\dotfill X

\begin{table}[htbp]
\centering
\small
\caption{This is a table}
\begin{tabular}{|
*{10}{>{\raggedright\arraybackslash}p{.9cm}|}
} \hline

xx\-xxxx &
xxx\-xxx &
\multicolumn{2}{>{\centering}p{2cm}|}{xxxxx xxxx} & 
\multicolumn{5}{c|}{xxxxxxxxxx}     \\ \cline{3-9}

 &  & xxa\-xxx\-xx  & xxxq\-xxxx\-xxx   & xxxw\-xxxx & xxxxx  & xxxk\-xxxxx & \multicolumn{2}{c|}{xxxxx} \\ \hline

xxx\-xxxx et al. (1900) & xxxxx &
\multicolumn{2}{c|}{xxxxxx} & xxy\-xxx\-xxx & xxxxxx & xxx & $\thicksim$x km & for x = 0.1 \\ \cline{8-9}

& & & & & & & $\thicksim$y km & for x = 0.2 \\ \cline{8-9}

& & & & & & & $\thicksim$z km & for x = 0.3 \\ \cline{8-9}

\end{tabular}
\end{table}
\end{document}