Word wrapping in latex

asked Apr 26, 2009 at 14:26

Use p{width} for your column specifiers instead of l/r/c.

begin{tabular}{|p{1cm}|p{3cm}|}
  This text will be wrapped & Some more text \
end{tabular}

EDIT: (based on the comments)

begin{table}[ht]
    centering
    begin{tabular}{p{0.35linewidth} | p{0.6linewidth}}
      Column 1  & Column2 \ hline
      This text will be wrapped & Some more text \
      Some text here & This text maybe wrapped here if its tooooo long \
    end{tabular}
    caption{Caption}
    label{tab:my_label}
end{table}

we get:

With the regular tabular environment, you want to use the p{width} column type, as marcog indicates. But that forces you to give explicit widths.

Another solution is the tabularx environment:

usepackage{tabularx}
...
begin{tabularx}{linewidth}{ r X }
    right-aligned foo & long long line of blah blah that will wrap when the table fills the column width\
end{tabularx}

All X columns get the same width. You can influence this by setting hsize in the format declaration:

>{setlengthhsize{.5hsize}} X >{setlengthhsize{1.5hsize}} X

but then all the factors have to sum up to 1, I suppose (I took this from the LaTeX companion). There is also the package tabulary which will adjust column widths to balance row heights. For the details, you can get the documentation for each package with texdoc tabulary (in TeXlive).

answered Apr 26, 2009 at 14:36

Another option is to insert a minipage in each cell where text wrapping is desired, e.g.:

begin{table}[H]
begin{tabular}{l}
begin{minipage}[t]{0.8columnwidth}%
a very long line a very long line a very long line a very long line
a very long line a very long line a very long line a very long line
a very long line a very long line a very long line %
end{minipage}tabularnewline
end{tabular}
end{table}

answered Feb 19, 2010 at 1:11

I like the simplicity of tabulary package:

usepackage{tabulary}
...
begin{tabulary}{linewidth}{LCL}
    hline
    Short sentences      & #  & Long sentences                                                 \
    hline
    This is short.       & 173 & This is much loooooooonger, because there are many more words.  \
    This is not shorter. & 317 & This is still loooooooonger, because there are many more words. \
    hline
end{tabulary} 

In the example, you arrange the whole width of the table with respect to textwidth. E.g 0.4 of it. Then the rest is automatically done by the package.

Most of the example is taken from http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Tables .

answered Jan 20, 2014 at 14:43

Simple like a piece of CAKE!

You can define a new column type like (L in this case) while maintaining the current alignment (c, r or l):

documentclass{article}
usepackage{array}
newcolumntype{L}{>{centeringarraybackslash}m{3cm}}

begin{document}

begin{table}
    begin{tabular}{|c|L|L|}
        hline
        Title 1 & Title 2 & Title 3 \
        hline 
        one-liner & multi-line and centered & multicolumn{1}{m{3cm}|}{multi-line piece of text to show case a multi-line and justified cell}   \
        hline
        apple & orange & banana \
        hline
        apple & orange & banana \
        hline
    end{tabular}
end{table}
end{document}

answered Dec 19, 2018 at 19:17

cheshirekowcheshirekow

4,7776 gold badges42 silver badges46 bronze badges

To change the text AB into A r B in a table cell, put this into the cell position: makecell{A \ B}.

Before doing that, you also need to include package makecell.

answered Oct 13, 2019 at 12:55

The new tabularray makes wrapping text in cells easier then ever before.

The package supports all the traditional used column names like c, l, r, etc., but also has its own Q column which accepts various keys to control the width and vertical and horizontal alignment. It also provides an X column, as known from tabularx` which will automatically calculate the width of the column to fit the table into the available text width.

Another nice feature is that all the settings can also be done for individual cells.

documentclass{article}
usepackage{tabularray}

begin{document}

begin{table}
    begin{tblr}{|c|Q[2cm,valign=m]|X[j,valign=m]|}
        hline
        Title 1 & Title 2 & Title 3 \
        hline 
        one-liner & multi-line text & multi-line piece of text to show case a multi-line and justified cell   \
        hline
        apple & orange & banana \
        hline
        SetCell{h,2cm} wrapping text only in a single cell & orange & banana \
        hline
    end{tblr}
end{table}
end{document}

(thanks to Shayan Amani for providing a MWE in their answer!)

answered Jan 29, 2022 at 16:52

begin{table}
 caption{ Example of force text wrap}
 begin{center}
  begin{tabular}{|c|c|}
   hline
   cell 1       &   cell 2 \   hline
   cell 3                &       cell 4 & & very big line that needs to be wrap. \ hline
   cell 5       &   cell 6 \   hline
  end{tabular}
  label{table:example}
 end{center}
end{table}

answered Sep 9, 2013 at 5:25

documentclass{report}
begin{document}

noindent This is sample text in which word is not textbf{wrapping} to next line I want hyphened word forced to be wrap on next line. This is sample text in which word is not textbf{wrapping} to next line I want hyphened word forced to be wrap on next line. Thiasdfasdfs is sample text in sdfasdfwhich word is not textbf{wrapping} to next line I want hyphened word forced to be wrap on next line.
end{document}

This line breaks and the word wonder-\ful is hyphenated.

tolerance=1
emergencystretch=maxdimen
hyphenpenalty=10000
hbadness=10000