Guide to LaTeX (4th Edition) (Tools and Techniques

4.8. Tables 101
4 & Daysdon Bombers & 14 & 10 & 9 & 66:50 & 38:28 \\
The column format now consists of only seven column definitions, rlrrrcc.
! The previous third column c has been removed, and so each row contains one less
column separation symbol &. The new third column, the number of games won,
begins with the second & and is separated from the club name by the contents
of @{ 33 }, which is entered automatically without any additional & symbol.
The last two columns give the relations between goals and points won
and lost as a centered entry of the form m:n. The colons ‘:’ are only
coincidentally ordered exactly over one another since two-digit numbers
appear in every case on both sides of the colon. If one entry had been
9:101, the colon would have been shifted slightly to the left as the entire
entry was centered.
A vertical alignment of the ‘:’ independent of the number of digits
can also be achieved using an @-expression of the form r@{:}l in the
column format. This means that a colon is placed in every row between a
right and a left justified column. The column formatting argument in the
example now becomes
{rl@{ 33 }rrrr@{:}lr@{:}l} or
{|r|l||@{ 33 }|rrr|r@{:}l|r@{:}l|}
and the row entry is
4 & Daysdon Bombers & 14 & 10 & 9 & 66 & 50 & 38 & 28 \\
Each of the former c columns has been replaced by the two columns in
! r@{:}l. An @-expression inserts its text between the neighboring columns,
removing the intercolumn spacing that would normally be there. Thus the r
column is justified flush right with the ‘:’ and the following l column flush left.
The same method can be employed when a column consists of numbers with
decimal points and a varying number of digits.
The entries for the goal and point relationships are now made up of
two columns positioned about the ‘:’ symbol. This causes no problems
for entering the number of goals won and lost or for the number of plus
and minus points, since each entry has its own column. The column
headings, however, are the words ‘Goals’ and ‘Points’, stretching over
two columns each and without the colon. This is accomplished with the
\multicolumn command, which merges selected columns in a particular
row and redefines the column format. The first row of the unframed
soccer table is then
Position& Club & W & T & L & \multicolumn{2}{c}{Goals}
& \multicolumn{2}{c}{Points}\\[0.5ex]
Here \multicolumn{2}{c}{Goals} means that the next two columns
are to be combined into a centered column, containing the text ‘Goals’.
For the framed table, the new formatting argument in the \multicolumn
commands must be {c|} since the vertical line symbol | was also removed
when the old columns were combined. In deciding what belongs to a given