Good Stylistic LaTeX tables for papers

Question

I've been looking around on the web since yesterday to look for answers. But what I'm looking for are boxed cell tables with alternating white/gray backgrounds with a black header row in white text. Plus points if it is bordered and can cover the entire page. I've tried to do this in tabularray, but the color scheming is something I'm new to and if anyone could explain how to efficiently do this in LaTeX in general then you have my thanks. Some examples of stuff I've tried are the following:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{booktabs}
\usepackage[landscape,a4paper]{geometry}
\usepackage{colortbl}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\usepackage{xfrac}
\newcommand{\ra}[1]{\renewcommand{\arraystretch}{#1}}
\begin{document}
\begin{table*}\centering
\ra{1.3}
\begin{tabular}{c|c|c|c}\toprule
 Nucleus & \textit{I} & Natural Abundance / % & Larmor Frequency @ 7T \
\midrule
\rowcolor{black!20} \textsuperscript{1}H & \sfrac{1}{2} & 99.98 & 298.0 \
\textsuperscript{2}H & 1 & 0.02 & 45.7 \
\rowcolor{black!20} \textsuperscript{12}C & 0 & 98.90 & - \
\textsuperscript{13}C & \sfrac{1}{2} & 1.10 & 74.9 \
\rowcolor{black!20} \textsuperscript{14}N & 1 & 99.60 & 21.5 \
\textsuperscript{15}N & \sfrac{1}{2} & 0.40 & 30.2 \
\rowcolor{black!20} \textsuperscript{16}O & 0 & 99.96 & - \
\textsuperscript{17}O & \sfrac{1}{2} & 0.04 & 40.4 \
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}
\end{table*}
\end{document}

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{CormorantGaramond}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{matrix}
\begin{document}

\tikzset{
    table/.style={
        matrix of nodes,
        row sep=-\pgflinewidth,
        column sep=-\pgflinewidth,
        nodes={
            rectangle,
            draw=black,
            align=center
        },
        minimum height=1.5em,
        text depth=0.5ex,
        text height=2ex,
        nodes in empty cells,
%%
        every even row/.style={
            nodes={fill=gray!20}
        },
        column 1/.style={
            nodes={text width=2em,font=\bfseries}
        },
        row 1/.style={
            nodes={
                fill=black,
                text=white,
                font=\bfseries
            }
        }
    }
}

\begin{tikzpicture}

\matrix (first) [table,text width=6em]
{
& Monday   & Tuesday & Wednesday & Thursday & Friday\\
1   & A & B & C & D & E \\
2   & F & G & H & J & K \\
3   & A & B & C & D & E \\
4   & F & G & H & J & K \\
};


\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

Taken from:

https://tinkertailorsoldiersponge.com/blog/2014/07/07/fancy-thesis-tables-in-latex

and

Example of fancy table using TikZ package

respectively. The one closer in output to what I want is the second.

Answer 1

Here is how I'd do your first table but made to look more like your second table with tabularray. I've annotated the options specified in the option right after \begin{tblr} so hopefully it's clear what they do.

See the tabularray documentation for more info on each option.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{CormorantGaramond}
\usepackage[italic]{mathastext}% Garamond for numbers too
\usepackage{xfrac}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\usepackage{tabularray}
\UseTblrLibrary{siunitx}% library for aligning at decimal place
\begin{document}
\begin{table}\centering
\begin{tblr}{
colspec={Q[c,m] Q[c,m] % first two columns centered in middle
Q[m,c,si={table-format=2.2},wd=7em] % next two centered but aligned at decimals
Q[m,c,si={table-format=3.1},wd=7em]}, % also a fixed width, so header wraps
row{odd} = {bg=black!20},% make odd rows have gray background
row{1} = {bg=black,fg=white,font=\bfseries},% top row black with white foreground and in bold
vlines,hlines, % use both horizontal and vertical lines
}
{{{Nucleus}}} & {{{\textit{I}}}} & {{{Natural \ Abundance / %}}} & {{{Larmor \ Frequency @ 7T}}} \
\textsuperscript{1}H & \sfrac{1}{2} & 99.98 & 298.0 \
\textsuperscript{2}H & 1 & 0.02 & 45.7 \
\textsuperscript{12}C & 0 & 98.90 & {{{---}}} \
\textsuperscript{13}C & \sfrac{1}{2} & 1.10 & 74.9 \
\textsuperscript{14}N & 1 & 99.60 & 21.5 \
\textsuperscript{15}N & \sfrac{1}{2} & 0.40 & 30.2 \
\textsuperscript{16}O & 0 & 99.96 & {{{---}}} \
\textsuperscript{17}O & \sfrac{1}{2} & 0.04 & 40.4
\end{tblr}
\end{table}
\end{document}

There are certainly ways to make it fill the page, but this particular table doesn't have the data to do that, and I'd want to see what the rest would look like before deciding on their arrangement.

Arguably it looks just as good if you remove the internal lines:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{CormorantGaramond}
\usepackage[italic]{mathastext}% Garamond for numbers too
\usepackage{xfrac}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\usepackage{tabularray}
\UseTblrLibrary{siunitx}% library for aligning at decimal place
\begin{document}
\begin{table}\centering
\begin{tblr}{
colspec={|Q[c,m] Q[c,m] % first two columns centered in middle
Q[m,c,si={table-format=2.2},wd=7em] % next two centered but aligned at decimals
Q[m,c,si={table-format=3.1},wd=7em]|}, % also a fixed width to header wraps
row{odd} = {bg=black!20},% make odd rows have gray background
row{1} = {bg=black,fg=white,font=\bfseries},% top row black with white spacing and in bold
 % use both horizontal and vertical lines
}
{{{Nucleus}}} & {{{\textit{I}}}} & {{{Natural \ Abundance / %}}} & {{{Larmor \ Frequency @ 7T}}} \
\textsuperscript{1}H & \sfrac{1}{2} & 99.98 & 298.0 \
\textsuperscript{2}H & 1 & 0.02 & 45.7 \
\textsuperscript{12}C & 0 & 98.90 & {{{---}}} \
\textsuperscript{13}C & \sfrac{1}{2} & 1.10 & 74.9 \
\textsuperscript{14}N & 1 & 99.60 & 21.5 \
\textsuperscript{15}N & \sfrac{1}{2} & 0.40 & 30.2 \
\textsuperscript{16}O & 0 & 99.96 & {{{---}}} \
\textsuperscript{17}O & \sfrac{1}{2} & 0.04 & 40.4 \ \hline
\end{tblr}
\end{table}
\end{document}

Edit: As mentioned in the comments, new columns are specified in the tblr options with the colspec={...} option. This is analogous to the portion like {|c|c|c|c|} you would see in a typical tabular environment to specify the columns.

The difference is that tabularray allows for more options, so the generic column specification looks like Q[m,c,wd=2in] rather than just c, with a Q followed by a list of options in brackets. You can find the available options on page 20 of the documentation.

(There are also some other options such as S and X type columns, but these are the same as Q columns with certain options; the documentation has the details.)

If you would want the table to take up the entire width of the page, it's usually a good idea to have one or more expandable columns, which are similar to tabularx's X columns. However, tabularray implements this with expansion coefficients which set the relative width of the columns when expanded.

You can also manually specify the width of a column to a fixed size with wd=.

Columns with either wd= or co= allow for lines to wrap, and therefore paragraphs of text. Here is an example with three columns, all of which allow for paragraphs.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\usepackage{tabularray}
\usepackage{lipsum}% generate dummy paragraphs
\begin{document}
\lipsum[5]
\begin{table}[h]\centering
\begin{tblr}{colspec={
Q[wd=0.8in,l,m]% first column is exactly 1in wide, left aligned in the vertical middle
Q[co=1,l,m]% second column has an expandable width of coefficient 1
Q[co=2,l,m]% third column has an expandable width of coefficient 2 (Wider)
},% end of colspec
row{odd} = {bg=black!20},% make odd rows have gray background
row{1} = {bg=black,fg=white,font=\bfseries},% top row black with white foreground and in bold
hlines,vlines
}
Fixed & Expands & Expands Wider \
\lipsum[1][1] & \lipsum[2][1-2] & \lipsum[3][1-2] \
\end{tblr}
\end{table}
\end{document}

Those with coefficients will expand naturally to fill the width of the page; the larger the coefficient, the larger relative size they will have.

If you wanted each column the same width you would use co=1 in all their column specifications.