how to create a table where a column is text that wraps?

Question

The basic tabular package seems oriented for short columns, not where text wraps.

What to do when the third column in this case can be multiple lines of text that should wrap?

\begin{tabular} {|c|c|c|}\hline 
 Vendor & Website & Description \\ 
 \hline 
Amazon & \href{amazon.com} & long and windy description goes here \\
Avnet  & \href{avnet.com} & blah blah blah ... \\
\end{tabular}

There is a p{<width>} type column (as opposed to c) that formats as paragraph text. — Steven B. Segletes, May 11 '16 at 04:33

score 3 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:34

I use a lot this small column definitions for this kind of things --- I hope they can help (and give hints on how to modify them to your tastes):

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{array, ragged2e}
\newcolumntype{P}[1]{>{}p{#1\linewidth}<{}}
\newcolumntype{R}[1]{>{\RaggedRight\arraybackslash}p{#1\linewidth}<{}}
\newcolumntype{M}[1]{>{\RaggedRight\arraybackslash}m{#1\linewidth}<{}}

\newcommand{\longtext}{This is quite a long test, but not so long
as the text you get with \texttt{lipsum}, just to check things out.}

\begin{document}

\begin{tabular}{|c|c|P{0.3}|}
    \hline
    kind: & \texttt{P}-column & \longtext \\ 
    \hline
\end{tabular}

\begin{tabular}{|c|c|R{0.3}|}
    \hline
    kind: & \texttt{R}-column & \longtext \\ 
    \hline
\end{tabular}

\begin{tabular}{|c|c|M{0.3}|}
    \hline
    kind: & \texttt{M}-column & \longtext \\ 
    \hline
\end{tabular}

Normally justified text come out badly in small columns; I normally prefer using \raggedright or, better, \RaggedRight for this kind of text.

The \arraybackslash it's here to avoid the infamous Misplaced noalign error...

how to create a table where a column is text that wraps?

1 Answers1