Main Body
Part 2: Table Basics
Table Construction – An Introduction
Tables in scientific papers are set up in a standardized fashion, with few horizontal and no vertical lines. Any word processing package will let you make tables easily and customize them to satisfy the formatting requirements for scientific papers.
Table requirements:
Tables are lists of things, and are used when you are comparing things that don’t work well in graphs. Remember to include the units, and to clearly identify each column and row. Also remember to include a clear and descriptive table legend.
Constructing Table and Figure Legends:
Your table and figure legends must fully explain your table or figure Never just say “table of data” or “table for cardiopulmonary data” or “pH vs time”, or “graph of pH over time”, but give us the full details. The goal is to have a table or figure legend that allows you to understand what is going on in it, without having to read the methods or results section of your paper.
Decide what you are trying to portray in your table or figure. Not, what data did you put in it, but what is it about.
For example, is it a comparison of different groups? Is it a relationship between one variable and another? Is it something that is a response to a particular treatment? Once you have the category of what you are portraying figured out, it is fairly easy to set up the legend.
Step 1: Start by making a complete descriptive sentence of your table or Figure, e.g.
“This Figure shows the relationship between pH and time in 3 streams in Prince Edward Island, Canada, during the summer of 1999″. Then make it a “sentence fragment” by cutting off your “This Figure shows”, and you’ll have your legend.
The Relationship between pH and time in 3 streams in Prince Edward Island, Canada, during the summer of 1999.
Try another example: “This Table shows the osmoregulatory response of lobster hemolymph to immersion in fresh water for 10 minutes” … again, chop off the “this table shows”, and: Osmoregulatory response of lobster hemolymph to immersion in freshwater for 10 minutes.
Step 2: What to include:
- Broad statement of what it is about
- Information on what species or variables are being studie
- Iinformation on statistics if applicable (including what error bars mean)
- Information on location and date if they are needed to understand the data…
…in short, all information needed to understand the table or figure.
- Note: A legend is not the same as a key. A key is something that identifies the symbols or characters in your table or graph.
- Note: Figure legends generally go at the bottom of the figure, and Table Legends go at the top of the table.
- Note: Use a hanging paragraph, as shown in this sentence. In Word, place your cursor at the start of the second line of text, then use the ruler at the top of the page to set up your hanging paragraph (see example on the next page).
Hanging Paragraphs
Use these for table and figure legends, and also for setting up your Literature cited sections)
There are different ways to setup the hanging indents, but the easiest way is to use the ruler in Word. If your ruler is not enabled, click on the view tab and check the box beside Ruler.
- Hold your mouse over the center triangle of the ruler indicator until the words “hanging indent” appear, then drag that part of the ruler indicator over to the right.
- All subsequent lines should now appear indented, with the first line “hanging out” to the left as shown at right.
Scientific Table set up Note:
- Scientific tables do not use horizontal and vertical lines around all the “cells” in the table. Therefore these must be turned off, and only a few lines left intact. Follow the instructions on the next pages to set up tables using Microsoft Word 2007.
Table construction in Word 2010
Go into the Insert tab, and click on the Table, to get the table setup. The easiest way to get started is to highlight the number of columns and rows you want.
Follow these rules for a correct scientific table set-up:
- Write a complete table legend and place it at the top.
- Organize your table so that what you want to compare is in adjacent columns
- Remove all vertical and horizontal lines except above & below header rows & at the end
- Make sure that contents are centred under the headings except the left hand columne
- Make sure you include all necessary units.
- Hint: Start your table with all the vertical and horizontal lines intact (so you can see your table). We’ll turn them off later in the process.
Adjusting the look of your table: Borders and Splitting Cells
Once your table size is defined, you can change the borders by highlighting your table cells, and clicking on the Design Tab, and clicking on Borders
- Click on No Border to turn off all the vertical and horizontal lines, then highlight specific rows or columns to turn on the ones that you want in your finished table.
- Join or split cells by clicking on the Layout tab (with your cursor in a table cell, so that the Table layout is active), and clicking on Merge Cells.
Table setup hints:
The goal is to make it attractive and easy to follow:
- Put things you want to compare in adjacent columns
- Remember to include the units for each column of data: put them in the columns and not in each individual cell.
- Turn off extraneous lines
- Use common sense when reporting numbers of decimal places
How many decimals should you report in numbers in your tables?
- Report one more decimal than used to measure the data. e.g. if temperature is measured to one decimal place (e.g. 15.4EC), report summarized numbers to two decimal places (e.g. 15.45 EC).
- Never report strings of numbers past the decimal point if your measuring device doesn’t measure to that level of accuracy. That gives a fraudulent impression of the degree of accuracy of your data!
Table Examples
Here are two examples showing the same data, but set up differently. The different set-up emphasizes different things, so you need to think about set-up when you make the table.
- The first table is comparing a number of measures for males and females and runners to non- runners, all before and after (This makes it easy to say that males had smaller or larger values than females, or runners had different pulses than non-runners).
- The second table is comparing the change in pulse rate to the heights or weights for individual Use this type if you want to compare the individual parameters for each group, such as saying that male runners had this pulse, this height and this weight.
Table 1. Example of a table set up to compare the differences (with respect to measured variables) in the different categories of runners.
| Male runners | Male non-runners | Female runners | Female non-runners | |||||
| Before running | After Running | Before running | After Running | Before running | After Running | Before running | After Running | |
| Mean Pulse (Beats/min) | 70.25 | 81.21 | 71.25 | 70.94 | 80.91 | 112.82 | 78.27 | 77.64 |
| Mean Height (inches) | 71.23 | 70.48 | 66.61 | 64.98 | ||||
| Mean Weight (pounds) | 162 | 155.72 | 129.27 | 120 |
Table 2. Example of a table set up to compare the differences in measured variables with respect to different categories of runners.
| Mean Pulse (beats/min) | Mean Height (inches) | Mean Weight (pounds) | |||
| Males | Runners | Before Running | 70.25 | 71.23 | 162 |
| After Running | 81.21 | ||||
| Non-Runners | Before Running | 71.25 | 70.48 | 155.72 | |
| After Running | 70.94 | ||||
| Females | Runners | Before Running | 80.91 | 66.61 | 129.27 |
| After Running | 112.82 | ||||
| Non-Runners | Before Running | 78.27 | 64.98 | 120 | |
| After Running | 77.64 |
