Too little space between table and caption

Question

Why is there so little space between my table and its caption? Is this normal?

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}

\begin{table}
\caption{Some words ...}
\begin{tabular}{lll}
and yet some & more words & to see the space problem \\
Here is a & second row. & It is a table.
\end{tabular}
\end{table}

\end{document}

I found The space between the table and its caption is very small where the OP faced the same problem, but did not provide a full MWE.

I think that \usepackage{caption} will solve your problem. Edit: this is also the solution to the problem of the question you linked. — Phelype Oleinik, Mar 12 '18 at 15:50
as mentioned @PhelypeOleinik, \documentclass{article} \usepackage{caption} \begin{document} \begin{table} \caption{Some words ...} \begin{tabular}{lll} and yet some & more words & to see the space problem \\ Here is a & second row. & It is a table. \end{tabular} \end{table} \end{document} will add space between caption and table. size of space you can adjust with caption option skip=... — Zarko, Mar 12 '18 at 15:53
My question was not how to solve the problem, but why it occurs and if this is normal. — Joe, Mar 12 '18 at 16:00
@Joe Oh, sorry. Well... normal it is, you aren't using any packages and I got the same result. Why, I guess that's because when TeX is typesetting paragraphs, a \baselineskip separates one line from another, but in this case you can a \caption right on top of a \begin{tabular}, and possibly they don't have (without the caption package) an amount of space that should separate them, so TeX puts one box right on top of the other, making the "space" between them so narrow. Someone who knows stuff will tell you if I just wrote a lot of garbage or not :) — Phelype Oleinik, Mar 12 '18 at 16:07
Put some letter with a descender, like qypgj in the caption to see the space grow :) — Phelype Oleinik, Mar 12 '18 at 16:10
@PhelypeOleinik, this question has been for already asked, but i'm the worst searcher on the site for this :-(. if you know one, please go ahead! — Zarko, Mar 12 '18 at 16:24

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 12 '18 at 16:36

the space between caption and table depends on the document class.

article (and all the basic latex classes) assume that captions in floats are always below the content, and insert space above it, not below it. that's appropriate for figures, but not for tables.

other document classes (e.g. amsart) make a different assumption, that in a figure environment, the caption is below the figure, but in a table environment, the caption is at the top and space is inserted between caption and table proper.

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 12 '18 at 18:40

This is a workaround for the standard classes such as article:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{etoolbox}

\makeatletter
\appto\@floatboxreset{\check@table}
\newcommand{\check@table}{%
  \expandafter\ifstrequal\expandafter{\@captype}{table}
   {% exchange \abovecaptionskip with \belowcaptionskip
    \dimen@=\abovecaptionskip
    \abovecaptionskip=\belowcaptionskip
    \belowcaptionskip=\dimen@
   }
   {}%
}
\makeatother

\begin{document}

\begin{table}
\centering

\caption{Some words ...}

\begin{tabular}{lll}
and yet some & more words & to see the space problem \\
Here is a & second row. & It is a table.
\end{tabular}

\end{table}

\end{document}

Too little space between table and caption

2 Answers2