Center first line of a table

Question

I'm working with

\begin{tabular}{lll}
\textbf{text} & \textbf{text} & \textbf{text}\\
&&\\
.
.
.
&&\\
\end{tabular}

Since lll puts everything at the left. What's the way to center the words of the first line of the table and the rest lines have the lll align?

---

I'm using

\begin{tabular}{lll}
\multicolumn{3}{c}\textbf{text} & \textbf{text} &\textbf{text}\\
&&\\
&&\\
\end{tabular}

But it's nor working.

Answer 1

I was pretty sure that this is a duplicate question, but any other question I found was way more complicated. In any case, the correct way to use \multicolumn is:

\begin{tabular}{lll}
\multicolumn{1}{c}{\textbf{text}} & \multicolumn{1}{c}{\textbf{text}} &\multicolumn{1}{c}{\textbf{text}}\\
a&b&c\\
12346543432&1253156&lalala\\
\end{tabular}

Note:

1. The first argument tells how many cells you want to combine together. Here, you just want to change a single cell by itself and not combine it with any neighbouring cell.
2. The second argument specifies the format of the cell (here: 'c'entered).
3. The third argument (!) is the contents of the cell. Thus, the contents of the cell as to be between { and }.

Answer 2

The thead command, from makecell, allows for a common formatting of its argument, line breaks and is by default vertically and horizontally centred.

Demo of usage:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{array, makecell}
\renewcommand\theadfont{\bfseries}

\begin{document}

\begin{tabular}{lll}
  \thead{text1\\text2} & \thead{text} &\thead{text}\\
  Blah blah & Blah blah & Blah blah \\
  Blah & Blah & Blah \\
\end{tabular}

\end{document}