Graphics, Figures & Tables ⇒ Vertically Alignment of Table Cell Content not properly

[daviddoria]

I am trying to vertically center content in a table cell. I came up with this after some googling:

Code: Select all

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{array}
 
\begin{document}
\begin{table}
\centering
\caption{MyCaption}
\begin{center}
\begin{tabular*}{\textwidth}{@{\extracolsep{\fill}} |p{5cm}|m{3in}|c|} %is there a way to use m without a specific length, and just say "center it"?
 
\hline
big text big text big text big text big text big text big text big text big text big text big text big text big text big text big text big text big text big text big text big text big text big text big text big text big text big text big text big text big text & Column2 Title Goes here & Column3 title here\\
\hline
\end{tabular*}
 
\end{center}
 
\end{table}
 
\end{document}

but it does not work as I'd like (there are multiple obvious problems, namely, that the text is not vertically centered in the second cell). The idea of the example is to have a lot of text in the first cell, vertically centered short text in the second cell, and non-vertically centered (normal) text in the third cell. Any tips on where I'm going wrong?

Thanks,

David

[kaiserkarl13]

I think the problem is linked to a misinterpretation of what the m{}, p{}, and b{} types do from the array package. Recall that \parbox{width}{text} creates text whose base line matches the base line of the surrounding text. Thus if you want the text in column 2 to match the center of column 1, column 1 should be in an m{}-style tabular column, not column 2.

Column 3 should be in a p{}-style tabular column to match that idea, from your description.

[daviddoria]

Ok, getting closer. You are right, with this:

\begin{tabular*}{\textwidth}{@{\extracolsep{\fill}} |m{5cm}|c|p{5cm}|}

column 2 is indeed centered vertically. However, is there a way to do this without specifying the '5cm' in the m{}? Also, the table is "broken" as shown in the attached table.jpg - how would I fix that?