Table caption with centered small-caps title and fully-justifed description

Question

I often see tables with centered titles and fully-justified descriptions. Here is an example.

I know how to use the caption package to alter the label and title, but I can't figure out how to get the description fully justified. Instead, my description adopts the \centering that I use to get the table centered.

What is the best way to do this? Here is my best attempt.

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[font=sc]{caption}
\usepackage{booktabs}
\usepackage{lipsum}

\begin{document}

\begin{table}
    \centering
    \caption{This could win me the Nobel Prize in Economics.}
    {\noindent Fine, this could win me the Nobel \emph{Memorial} Prize in Economic Sciences.~\lipsum[1]}
    \begin{tabular*}{\textwidth}{c @{\extracolsep{\fill}} ccc}
    \toprule
    xx&1&2&3\\
    xx&1&2&3\\
    \bottomrule
    \end{tabular*}
\end{table}

\end{document}

But this gives me a centered description.

I see there is a threeparttable package, but I don't want footnotes. I would like the description to immediately follow the title.

Answer 1

Like this?

To my opinion the simplest way is to move this long explanation in the first row of table:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[font=sc]{caption}
\usepackage{booktabs}

\usepackage{lipsum}
\usepackage{showframe}
\renewcommand*\ShowFrameColor{\color{red}}

\begin{document}

\begin{table}[htb]
    \centering
\caption{This could win me the Nobel Prize in Economics.}
    \begin{tabular*}{\textwidth}{c @{\extracolsep{\fill}} ccc}
\multicolumn{4}{@{}p{\textwidth}@{}}{\footnotesize 
    Fine, this could win me the Nobel \emph{Memorial} Prize in Economic Sciences.~\lipsum[1]}\\
    \toprule
xx  &   1 &   2 &   3\\
xx  &   1 &   2 &   3\\
    \bottomrule
    \end{tabular*}
\end{table}

\end{document}

Answer 2

Since you may be using such descriptions for figures regularly, define a macro to take care of the formatting; this includes keeping the text justified using \justifying (from ragged2e):

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[font=sc]{caption}

\usepackage{lipsum,ragged2e}

\newcommand{\figuredesc}[1]{% Figure description
  \begingroup
  \par
  \justifying\small
  \noindent #1
  \par
  \endgroup}

\begin{document}

\begin{table}[htb]
  \centering
  \caption{This could win me the Nobel Prize in Economics.}

  \figuredesc{Fine, this could win me the Nobel \emph{Memorial} Prize in Economic Sciences.~\lipsum[1]}

  \begin{tabular}{ *{4}{c} }
    \hline
    A & 1 & 2 & 3 \\
    B & 1 & 2 & 3 \\
    \hline
  \end{tabular}
\end{table}

\end{document}

Answer 3

You can use threeparttablex, an extension of threeparttable, which allows you to insert table notes anywhere in a longtable, and ltablex, which brings the functionalities of longtable to tabularx.

Note the syntax of threeparttablex is slightly differnt from that of threeparttable. With ltablex, the caption has to be inserted within the table, as with longtable.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[showframe]{geometry}
\usepackage[font=sc]{caption}
\usepackage{booktabs, threeparttablex,  ltablex}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\keepXColumns

\begin{document}

\begin{ThreePartTable}
  \setTableNoteFont{\footnotesize}
  \begin{TableNotes}[flushleft]
    \item[\hskip-\fontdimen2\font]Fine, this could win me the Nobel \emph{Memorial} Prize in Economic Sciences.~\lipsum[1]
  \end{TableNotes}
  \begin{tabularx}{\textwidth}{*{4}{>{\centering\arraybackslash}X}}%
    \caption{This could win me the Nobel Prize in Economics.}\\
    \insertTableNotes\\
    \addlinespace%
    \toprule
    \endfirsthead
    xx & 1 & 2 & 3 \\
    xx & 1 & 2 & 3 \\
    \bottomrule
  \end{tabularx}
\end{ThreePartTable}

\end{document}