Changing the header row style of a table to discriminate it from other records

Question

I wanted to change the header of table to discriminate it from other records. It can be changing bounding box or font or what ever it is usual.

\begin{table}
    \centering
        \begin{tabular*}{0.75\textwidth}{@{\extracolsep{\fill}} | c | c | c | }
               \hline
                Measurement Type & Range & Accuracy \\
\hline
                Air Temperature &   -20\,^{\circ}\mathrm{C} - 60\,^{\circ}\mathrm{C} & ± 0.3\,^{\circ}\mathrm{C} \\
\hline
            Humidity & 0 - 100 & \pm2"\%" \\
\hline
Surface Temperature & -20\,^{\circ}\mathrm{C} - 70\,^{\circ}\mathrm{C} & \pm0.6\,^{\circ}\mathrm{C} \\
\hline
        \end{tabular*}
    \caption{Sensors specifications}
    \label{tab:SensorsSpecifications}
\end{table}

This is the table and I wanted to change the style of the first row.

Answer 1

Here is a suggestion. I have taken the liberty of changing a few other parts as well but basically you can treat the header items as regular text and use bold, italics etc.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{booktabs}
\begin{document}
\begin{table}
    \caption{Sensors specifications}
    \label{tab:SensorsSpecifications}
    \begin{center}
        \begin{tabular*}{0.75\textwidth}{@{\extracolsep{\fill}}  l  c  c  }
           \toprule
             \textbf{Measurement Type} &\textbf{Range} &\textbf{Accuracy} \\
           \midrule
             Air Temperature &--20$^\circ$C--60$^\circ$C &$\pm 0.3^\circ$C \\
             Humidity &0--100 &$\pm2$\% \\
             Surface Temperature &--20$^\circ$C--70$^\circ$C &$\pm0.6^\circ$C \\
           \bottomrule
        \end{tabular*}
    \end{center}
\end{table}
\end{document}

Note that I have used the booktabs package which allows better line control. Please refer to the package documentation for details.

Answer 2

I would recommend this, after loading the packages \usepackage{booktabs,tabularx}

\documentclass{article}

\pagestyle{empty}
\usepackage[margin=1in]{geometry} % not needed

\usepackage{booktabs,tabularx}

\usepackage{textcomp}% provides \textdegree
\newcommand \tC {\mbox{\textdegree C}}

\begin{document}

    \begin{table}
        \centering
            \begin{tabularx}{0.75\textwidth}{*{3}{>{\centering\arraybackslash}X}}
                   \toprule
                    \bfseries Measurement Type & \bfseries Range & \bfseries Accuracy \\ 
    \midrule[\heavyrulewidth]
                    Air Temperature &   $-20$ to $60\tC$ & $\pm 0.3\tC$ \\ 
    \midrule
                Humidity & $0$ to $100\,\%$ & $\pm2\,\%$ \\ 
    \midrule
    Surface Temperature & $-20$ to $70\tC$ & $\pm0.6\tC$ \\ 
    \bottomrule
            \end{tabularx}
        \caption{Sensors specifications.}
        \label{tab:SensorsSpecifications}
    \end{table}

\end{document}

Several remarks:

• I did not change this, but I would not make the table fixed width unless the space is too narrow, i.e., I would not use tabularx at all and I would write:

  \begin{tabular}{*{3}{c}}
  ...
  \end{tabular}
  

• Using dash for interval with negative values will always be confusing, so I changed to to

• Some people won't agree with me, but I think that tables with vertical bars look awfully. Especially since you don't have many columns, I would omit them.

• I believe that after a caption text, there should be a full stop ..

Answer 3

Just to add some flavor to the soup, one can use the table option of the xcolor package and include row colors as follows:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[table]{xcolor}
\begin{document}
\begin{table}
    \caption{Sensors specifications}
    \label{tab:SensorsSpecifications}
    \begin{center}
        \renewcommand{\arraystretch}{1.3} % Allows a better display of the table.
        \begin{tabular}{l c c}
             \rowcolor{blue!10} %changes the row color
             \textbf{Measurement Type} &\textbf{Range} &\textbf{Accuracy} \\ 
             Air Temperature &--20$^\circ$C--60$^\circ$C &$\pm 0.3^\circ$C \\ 
             Humidity &0--100 &$\pm2$\% \\ 
             Surface Temperature &--20$^\circ$C--70$^\circ$C &$\pm0.6^\circ$C \\ 
        \end{tabular}
    \end{center}
\end{table}
\end{document}

This results in: