How can I reduce the spacing between columns in a table?

There are other similar questions, all with different answers, but I could not find one which achieves what I want. In the table below, the spacing between the numbers is too wide. How can I shrink it a bit?

\newcommand[2] < \begin \textbf \\ \textbf \end > \begin[ht] \begin \cline & \multicolumn> & \multicolumn> \\ \cline & \testmode & \testmode & \testmode & \testmode & \testmode & \testmode \\ \hline \multicolumn<|c|> > & 209.86 & 370.18 & 411.25 & 180.85 & 245.37 & 262.61 \\ \multicolumn<|c|> > & 213.28 & 363.35 & 476.10 & 209.04 & 247.02 & 208.63 \\ \hline \end \caption \label \end

You can adjust \tabcolsep or write something like @ <\hskip.05cm>between the column definitions. But to really help you it would be greatly appreciated to see a MWE.

Please always add a minimal but working example (MWE) instead of only a code snippet. A compilable examples makes it easier to reproduce your problem without need for any speculation about additional needed or related code. So please help us to help you.

@TeXnician and @Jürgen: I think, the main problem is doubling \tabcolsep with the inner tabular (see my answer) and therefore no need to reduce the column separation of the outer tabular .

4 Answers 4

In your example you have doubled the column separation using a tabular inside a tabular . Note: LaTeX adds a distance of \tabcolsep before and after each column. In your case you have such a distance before and after the column of the inner tabular of \testmode and before and after the column of the outer tabular. To avoid this, you should add @<> before the first column of the inner tabular and after the last column of the inner tabular:

\documentclass \begin \newcommand[2] c@<>>% Avoid doubling \tabcolsep \textbf \\ \textbf \end% > \begin[ht] \begin \cline & \multicolumn> & \multicolumn> \\ \cline & \testmode & \testmode & \testmode & \testmode & \testmode & \testmode \\ \hline \multicolumn<|c|> > & 209.86 & 370.18 & 411.25 & 180.85 & 245.37 & 262.61 \\ \multicolumn<|c|> > & 213.28 & 363.35 & 476.10 & 209.04 & 247.02 & 208.63 \\ \hline \end \caption \label \end \end

To explain some more: By default LaTeX adds \hskip\tabcolsep before it starts a column and after it has finished a column. So you have the distance \tabcolsep before the first and after the last column and 2\tabcolsep between two columns. If you use @ the code of the argument of @ is added instead of the distance. So @<> just removes the distance.

Additional note: I would recommend to avoid vertical rules in tables (see the manual of package booktabs ) and to use package siunitx for number columns. And I would not center the elements of the first table row but left-align them. And because d=… in the table head is something like math, you should set it in math mode. In this case I also would not make it bold (using, e.g., \boldmath ), because font attributes in math have mostly a semantic (e.g, bold is often used for vectors or sets).