tabular cell alignment rotated contents

Question

How can rotated table headers be left justified?

Currently have this:

\documentclass[a4paper,8pt,twocolumn]{extarticle}
\usepackage{graphicx,multirow}
\begin{document}
    \begin{tabular}{l r c c c c c c c}
        \textbf{bla1}&\multirow{2}{*}{\textbf{bla2}}&\multirow{2}{*}{\textbf{\rotatebox{90}{bla3}}}&\multirow{2}{*}{\textbf{\rotatebox{90}{blablablablablabalbal4}}}\\
        \textbf{\textit{bla5}}\\
    \end{tabular}
\end{document}

Would ideally obtain the following:

Answer 1

You could use something like the following:

\documentclass[a4paper,8pt,twocolumn]{extarticle}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{makecell}
\begin{document}
    \begin{tabular}{l r c c c c c c c}
       \makecell[bc]{\textbf{bla 1} \\ \textbf{\textit{bla 5}}} &\textbf{bla2}&\textbf{\rotatebox{90}{bla3}}&\rotatebox{90}{\textbf{blablablablablabalbal4}}&\\
    \end{tabular}
\end{document}

Instead of the multirow commands, I have used the makecell package.

To vertically center bla 2 with respect to bla 1and bla 5 , you could use \raisebox{5pt}{\textbf{bla2}}

Answer 2

with use of thead and \rothead from makecell package is simple:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{makecell, rotating}
\renewcommand\theadfont{\normalsize\bfseries}
\renewcommand\theadalign{lb}

\begin{document}
\settowidth\rotheadsize{\theadfont blablablablablabalbal4}
    \begin{tabular}{l r c c }
\thead{bla1\\ bla5} & \thead{bla2}  & \rothead{bla3} & \rothead{blablablablablabalbal4}
    \\  \hline
a                   &   b           &   c            & d    
    \end{tabular}

\bigskip
    \begin{tabular}{l r c c }
\thead{bla1\\ bla5} & \thead[t]{\raisebox{1.2ex}{bla2}} & \rothead{bla3} & \rothead{blablablablablabalbal4}
    \\  \hline
a                   &   b           &   c            & d
    \end{tabular}

\bigskip
\settowidth\rotheadsize{\theadfont blablabalbal4}
    \begin{tabular}{l r c c }
\thead{bla1\\ bla5} & \thead[t]{bla2} & \rothead{bla3} & \rothead{blablabla blablabalbal4}
    \\  \hline
a                   &   b           &   c            & d
    \end{tabular}
\end{document}

personally i prefer solution on the top and on the bottom (if you can break header title into two lines).

Answer 3

One might use the \rothead command from makecell. Unfortunately you generally have to specify the value of \rotheadsize if you don't want untimely line breaks in the rotated head. Furthermore, you can't use the placement specifiers [bc] and similar. So I defined a \myrothead command which takes two optional arguments: the placement of the rotated cell (cc by default), and the rotation angle (90 by default):

\documentclass[a4paper,8pt,twocolumn]{extarticle}
\usepackage{graphicx, rotating}
\usepackage{caption, booktabs, makecell}
\usepackage{xparse}
\renewcommand{\theadfont}{\normalsize\bfseries}
\DeclareDocumentCommand{\myrothead}{O{cc}O{90}m}{\renewcommand{\theadalign}{#1}\renewcommand{\cellrotangle}{#2}
\settowidth{\rotheadsize}{\theadfont#3} \rothead{#3}}

\begin{document}

\begin{table}
  \centering
  \caption{Rotated heads}
  \begin{tabular}{l r c c c c c c c}
    \toprule
    \thead[bc]{bla 1 \\ \textit{bla 5}} &\thead[bc]{bla2}& \myrothead[bc]{bla3}& \myrothead[bc]{blablablablablabalbal4} \\
    \midrule
  \end{tabular}
\end{table}

\end{document}