m{} column in tabular doesn't center text in third(last) column

Question

This is such a simple thing and should just work, but I don't understand why it is not. I have a simple table with three columns and two rows. I wanted the text in each cell in the first row to be vertically centered. It does center vertically in the first and second columns, but in the third column, the text remains at the top. My source is as follows:

\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\usepackage[margin=2cm]{geometry}
\usepackage{array}
\title{}
\author{}
\pagestyle{empty}
\date{}

\begin{document}
\setlength\extrarowheight{2pt}
\begin{tabular}{|m{1cm}|m{4in}|m{3cm}|}
\hline
\textbf{No.} & \textbf{Particulars} & \textbf{Amount}\\[8pt]
\hline
1. & Blah blah blah &  2,000.00\\[8pt]
\hline
\end{tabular}
\end{document}

I almost feel sorry to have to ask this here, as it is such a simple thing. But, it gives me a less than satisfactory result, and I don't seem to be able to make out what is going wrong.

Answer 1

Instead of manually adding vertical space to the rows, I'd suggest using cellspace. You can adjust the spacing to suit your needs, while the contents will be vertically centered.

Personally, I prefer tables with a more open look (no vertical lines and less horizontal lines), so I added an example with booktabs as well. Lastly, you could also use the siunitx package to help with the aligment of number in table cells. If your second column sontains quite some text, I'd go for tabularx in order to make the table as wide as the textwidth while allowing automatical linebreaks in the second column. I have included an example on this as well.

Lastly, and if you'r tired of manually numbering rows, you can take a look at Automatic table row numbers

\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\usepackage[margin=2cm]{geometry}
\usepackage{array}


\usepackage[column=0]{cellspace}
\setlength\cellspacetoplimit{6pt}
\setlength\cellspacebottomlimit{\cellspacetoplimit}

\usepackage{booktabs}

\usepackage{siunitx}
\sisetup{input-ignore={,},input-decimal-markers={.}}
\usepackage{tabularx}

\begin{document}

With cellspace:

\begin{tabular}{|0{m{1cm}}|0{m{4in}}|0{m{3cm}}|}
\hline
\textbf{No.} & \textbf{Particulars} & \textbf{Amount}\\
\hline
1. & Blah blah blah &  2,000.00\\
\hline
2. & Blah blah blah &  2,000.00\\
\hline
\end{tabular}

\bigskip

With booktabs:

\begin{tabular}{m{1cm}m{4in}m{3cm}}
\toprule
\textbf{No.} & \textbf{Particulars} & \textbf{Amount}\\
\midrule
1. & Blah blah blah &  2,000.00\\
2. & Blah blah blah &  2,000.00\\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}

\bigskip

With booktabs, siunitx and tabularx:

\begin{tabularx}{\textwidth}{lXS[table-format=4.2]}
\toprule
{No.} & {Particulars} & {Amount}\\
\midrule
1. & Blah blah blah &  2,000.00\\
2. & Blah blah blah &  2,000.00\\
\bottomrule
\end{tabularx}

\end{document}

Answer 2

Change the \arraystretch instead of add some \extrarowheight plus [8pt] to each row:

\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\usepackage[margin=2cm]{geometry}
\usepackage{array}
\begin{document}
\renewcommand\arraystretch{1.6}
\begin{tabular}{|m{1cm}|m{4in}|m{3cm}|}\hline
\textbf{No.} & \textbf{Particulars} & \textbf{Amount}\\\hline
1. & Blah blah blah &  2,000.00\\\hline
\end{tabular}
\end{document}

(... and of course, instead of jailed tables, use booktabs!).