How to add a forced line break inside a table cell

Question

I have some text in a table and I want to add a forced line break. I want to insert a forced line break without having to specify the column width, i.e. something like the following:

\begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|}
\hline
Foo bar & Foo <forced line break here> bar & Foo bar \\
\hline
\end{tabular}

I know that \\ inserts a line break in most cases, but here it starts a new table row instead.

---

A similar question was asked before: How to break a line in a table

Answer 1

Use the makecell package. This package provides commands for formatting cells, including \thead (for header cells) and \makecell (for regular cells). For instance, to create a cell containing line breaks:

\makecell{Some really \\ longer text}

Additionally, the horizontal and vertical alignments can be chosen independently from those of the table they're included in. The default is cc, but you can change it globally in the preamble with

\renewcommand{\cellalign}{vh}
\renewcommand{\theadalign}{vh}

where v is one of t, c, or b and h one of l, c, or r. Alternatively, for a single cell, you can use the \makecell or \thead commands with the optional argument [vh].

---

Demo:

\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{fourier} 
\usepackage{array}
\usepackage{makecell}

\renewcommand\theadalign{bc}
\renewcommand\theadfont{\bfseries}
\renewcommand\theadgape{\Gape[4pt]}
\renewcommand\cellgape{\Gape[4pt]}

\begin{document}

  \begin{center}
    \begin{tabular}{ | c | c | c |}
      \hline
      \thead{A Head} & \thead{A Second \\ Head} & \thead{A Third \\ Head} \\
      \hline
      Some text &  \makecell{Some really \\ longer text}  & Text text text  \\
      \hline
    \end{tabular}
  \end{center}

\end{document} 

Answer 2

It's a quite old question, but I'll add my answer anyway, as the method I suggest didn't appear in the others

\begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|}
\hline
Foo bar & \begin{tabular}[x]{@{}c@{}}Foo\\bar\end{tabular} & Foo bar \\
\hline
\end{tabular}

where x is either t, c, or b to force the desired vertical alignment.

In case this is needed in more than a couple of places, it's better to define a command

\newcommand{\specialcell}[2][c]{%
  \begin{tabular}[#1]{@{}c@{}}#2\end{tabular}}

so the table line before can be one of

Foo bar & \specialcell{Foo\\bar} & Foo bar \\    % vertically centered
Foo bar & \specialcell[t]{Foo\\bar} & Foo bar \\ % aligned with top rule
Foo bar & \specialcell[b]{Foo\\bar} & Foo bar \\ % aligned with bottom rule

More variations are possible, for instance specifying also the horizontal alignment in the special cell.

Notice the @{} to suppress added space before and after the cell text.

Answer 3

You can switch your cell layout to paragraph to use the \newline command.

\begin{tabular}{|p{2cm}|p{2cm}|}
\hline
Test & foo \newline bar \\
...

Edit:

Use the following commands instead of p if you want to specify the alignment as well:

\newcolumntype{L}[1]{>{\raggedright\let\newline\\\arraybackslash\hspace{0pt}}m{#1}}
\newcolumntype{C}[1]{>{\centering\let\newline\\\arraybackslash\hspace{0pt}}m{#1}}
\newcolumntype{R}[1]{>{\raggedleft\let\newline\\\arraybackslash\hspace{0pt}}m{#1}}

Answer 4

You can use this:

\usepackage{pbox}

\begin{tabular}{|l|l|} \hline
    \pbox{20cm}{This is the first \\ cell} & second \\ \hline
    3rd & and the last cell \\ \hline
\end{tabular}

which looks like:

Note that the width supplied to \pbox is a maximum width. If the content is shorter the length of the longest line is taken.

Answer 5

Use the tabularx environment instead of tabular, and then use \newline where you want line breaks within a cell.

\usepackage{tabularx}
\begin{tabularx}{\textwidth}{lX}
    Section:   &  This is my     \newline
                  long paragraph \\
\end{tabularx}

The tabularx environment has a special column type, X, in addition to the usual ones, and its first argument is the desired width of the table. The X column will have the necessary width in order to make the whole table the desired width.

Note: \newline will not take effect in columns of standard type.

Details on tabularx can be found here.

Answer 6

Here's a very simple way to do it, using Plain TeX commands within the tabular environment:

\begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|}
\hline
here&\vtop{\hbox{\strut top line}\hbox{\strut botline}}&more\\
\hline
x&y&z\\
\hline
\end{tabular}

By using hboxes within the vtop we've stayed in vertical mode and therefore the width of the text in the hboxes determines the width of the vtop. This way we don't need to know the width of the text in advance. \strut will maintain the right space above and below the text in the hbox.

Answer 7

\begin{tabular}{lll}
a&\vbox{\hbox{\strut ASDF}\hbox{\strut ASDF}\hbox{\strut This is my
really long line}}&c
\end{tabular}

The \strut is essential for spacing.

Answer 8

You can also just fake it:

\begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|}
\hline
Foo bar & Foo & Foo bar \\
~       & bar &  ~      \\
\hline
\end{tabular}

Answer 9

Here I use stacks to accomplish it. Several things are noteworthy:

1. I demonstrate \Longstack , \Longunderstack and \Centerstack, which give three different alignments.

2. In order not to squeeze against the vertical margins, a \strutlongstacks{T} declaration was issued. Alternately, one might wrap a stack inside an \addstackgap[<gap>]{content} to add a vertical buffer above/below the stack.

3. Not shown is the ability to set the horizontal alignment of the stacked content with an optional argument, or to change the EOL character (from \\ to another user-specified token)

Here is the MWE.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[usestackEOL]{stackengine}
\begin{document}
\strutlongstacks{T}
\begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|}
\hline
Foo bar & \Longstack{ Foo \\ bar \\ baz} & Foo bar \\
\hline
Foo bar & \Longunderstack{ Foo \\ bar \\ baz} & Foo bar \\
\hline
Foo bar & \Centerstack{ Foo \\ bar} & Foo bar \\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\end{document}

Answer 10

This is a really old question, but since this was linked from a recent question on separating content and presentation, I'll add a ConTeXt answer for comparision.

In ConTeXt, \crlf adds a forced line-break, so achieving a forced line-break in a table is as simple as just adding \crlf in the appropriate place. Here is the complete example:

% Setup for rules at the top and bottom
\startsetups table:rules
  \setupTABLE[frame=off]
  \setupTABLE[row][first][topframe=on]
  \setupTABLE[row][last][bottomframe=on]
\stopsetups

% Setups for middle alignment
\startsetups table:middle
  \setupTABLE[align=middle]
\stopsetups

\starttext

\startTABLE[setups={table:rules, table:middle}]
  \NC Foo bar \NC Foo \crlf Bar \NC Foo bar \NC \NR
  \NC Foo bar \NC Foo \crlf Bar \NC Foo bar \NC \NR
\stopTABLE

\stoptext

which gives:

Answer 11

I believe I have the simplest answer here:

If you are using a paragraph column in a table, you can put text in an alignment environment and the table does not pick up the \\ as a new table row, so you can use it normally. For example:

\begin{tabular}{p{2in}p{2in}}
    \begin{flushleft}
        Some text over here \\ 
        newline! \\ 
        \bigskip all the way down 
    \end{flushleft} 
    & 
    \begin{flushleft}
        Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur 
        adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod
        tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore 
        magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam,
        quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris 
        nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo\\ \bigskip
        consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in 
        reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse
        cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. 
        Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non
        proident, sunt in culpa qui officia 
        deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.\\ 
        \bigskip \bigskip lorem ipsum\\
    \end{flushleft}\\
\end{tabular}\

Will give you a table with line breaks using the \\ command.

Answer 12

How about using \parbox in a custom command:

\documentclass{article}
\newsavebox\mybox
\newlength\mylength
\newcommand\boxup[2]{%
  \savebox\mybox{#1}%
  \setlength\mylength{\wd\mybox}%
  \parbox{\mylength}{#1 \\ #2}%
}
\begin{document}
\begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|}
Foo bar & \boxup{Foo}{bar} & Foo bar \\
\end{tabular}
\end{document}

This takes two arguments with the assumption that the first line is longer than the second. It would be possible to refine the code to work through an arbitrary number of lines and find the longest. If that's of interest I'll write something, probably using expl3 for the looping.

Answer 13

I think multirow is a simple elegant solution, at least for simple tables.

For example, I tried a few of the suggestions above but I found this worked the best:

\usepackage{multirow}
\begin{table}[ht]
    \caption{RESTful Resources}
    \centering
    \begin{tabular}{l l l}
        \hline
        Resource & Methods & Description \\
        \hline 
        \multirow{2}{*}{Resource1} & \multirow{2}{*}{POST, PUT} 
            & This resource contains ...\\
          & & \emph{Media types: text/plain, application/json}\\
        \multirow{2}{*}{Resource2} & \multirow{2}{*}{POST, PUT} 
            & This resource contains ...\\
          & & \emph{Media types: text/plain, application/json} \\
        \hline 
    \end{tabular}
    \label{table:resources}
\end{table}

Answer 14

It’s easy peasy to write multiline cells without fixing the column width with tblr environment of the new LaTeX3 package tabularray: just enclose the cell text with braces and use \\ to break lines:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tabularray}
\begin{document}
\begin{tblr}{|l|c|r|}
\hline
 Left & {Center \\ Cent \\ C} & {Right \\ R} \\
\hline
 {L \\ Left} & {C \\ Cent \\ Center} & R \\
\hline
\end{tblr}
\end{document}

Answer 15

I don't have direct help on how to add a linebreak, but using the multirow package may provide different route to same desired end. You can read a tutorial here:

http://andrewjpage.com/index.php?/archives/43-Multirow-and-multicolumn-spanning-with-latex-tables.html

But I have a feeling the \parbox answer in the similar question you linked is what you're looking for. I think using a box in the cell is going to be simplest and best way, was there something about that that wasn't working for you?

If you want to use parbox without having to hardcode in a width, here's one way that works for me. Not perfect, since it requires you to know beforehand the text of the longest line in the multi-line column, but it does work:

% define new length and set to length of longest line
\newlength{\longline}
\settowidth{\longline}{longest line in table}\\

\begin{tabular}{lll}

one line & \parbox[t]{\longline}{longest line in table \\ and another line} & more text \\
second line here& and what & more text 
\end{tabular}

Answer 16

It seems there is a rather simple solution. Just wrap the text into currly braces and use \raggedright like this:

{\raggedright \bfseries WS 2016 \\(average)}

Here is a simple example:

\begin{tabularx}{\textwidth}[ht]{|X|p{1.8cm}|}
  \hline
  Some Longer Column &
  {\raggedright \bfseries Line \\Break} \\\hline
  This is a wide line with some text & Small \\\hline
\end{tabularx}

This gives:

Answer 17

When I was younger I was typesetting a tabular environment inside a tabular environment. Since we have TikZ I use the tikzpicture environment inside tabulars, or even a tikzpicture inside a tikzpicture. I prefer putting simple TikZ nodes next and below each other, but it depends on actual task. I enclose an MWE with fast text height correction.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz}\pagestyle{empty}
\begin{document}
\tikzset{inner sep=0pt}
\begin{tabular}{|l|l|} \hline
 \begin{tikzpicture}
  \node[align=left, text height=4.5ex]{This is the\\[3pt]first cell};
\end{tikzpicture} 
    & second \\ \hline
    3rd & and the last cell \\ \hline
\end{tabular}
\end{document}

![MWE][1] [1]: https://i.sstatic.net/64Gjo.png

Answer 18

You can use the minipage environment:

\begin{minipage}[t]{0.2\columnwidth}%
This is the first line
\newline
second line
\newline
...
\end{minipage}

Answer 19

This approach isn't so different from some of the others already given, except that it "externalises" all of the design decisions from the table definition itself (that is, leaving it cleaner to write and read each table should you want to include multiple tables like this throughout your doc or docs).

Preliminaries (presumably in your preamble):

\usepackage{array} % needed if you're going to use \\ together with centering,
                   % raggedright, raggedleft in your column specifier (see
                   % manuals on \arraybackslash)
\newlength{\mywidestcolwidth}
\newcommand*\mycellformat{\protect\footnotesize}
\newcommand*\mytableparskip{\setlength\parskip{4pt}}
\newcommand*\setmywidestcolwidth[1]{
  \settowidth{\mywidestcolwidth}{\mycellformat #1}
}

Usage:

\setmywidestcolwidth{foo baz bar}
\begin{tabular}{|>{\mycellformat}c
                |>{\mytableparskip\mycellformat\centering\arraybackslash}p{\mywidestcolwidth}
                |>{\mycellformat}c|}
\hline
foo bar baz&
foo

foo baz bar

baz& 
foo

foo baz bar

baz\\ \hline
\end{tabular}

Skip the \mycellformat and \parskip if you have no need for them (although not necessary in your case, I included \parskip since it's useful to visually distinguish paragraphs from one another since paragraph indentation is automatically switched off in tables, and added \mycellformat to allow for uniform document-wide table design settings).

Answer 20

Personally, I prefer to use \usepackage{multirow} \multirow{"number of rows"}{"width"}{"contents"} for everything else except the information that should be on different rows.

For example:

 \begin{tabular}{p{2.5cm}@{\hskip 0mm}  p{5cm}@{\hskip 4mm} p{5cm} }
     Parameter & Description & Used by\\
     \hline
     \\[-0.1cm]
     \multirow{2}{*}{Accuracy}&1. The error rate or frequency of correctness of sensor readings.  & \\[0.3cm]
     & 2. The degree of correspondence of measured values to actual values.& \\[0.3cm]
      \hline
      \\[-0.1cm]
    \end{tabular}

Answer 21

You can use adjustbox:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{adjustbox}

\begin{document}

\begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|}
\hline
Foo bar & \adjustbox{stack=ll}{Foo\\bar} & Foo bar \\
\hline
\end{tabular}

\end{document}

See also this question.

Answer 22

This answer suggests using p-type column and \newline command.

However, once you realize that p-type column is just typesetted in a \parbox (basically a vbox in plain TeX), a paragraph break works.

So:

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}

\begin{tabular}{p{3cm}p{3cm}}
  hello
  
  world&hello

  world
\end{tabular}

\end{document}

I'm not sure why nobody have suggested that given how ⟨blank line⟩ is preferred over \newline or \\ in normal text.

Perhaps it's because of semantic meaning -- you're unlikely to include a whole paragraph in a table cell. But if you do it may make sense.

E.g. the example below includes 2 paragraphs in each table cell.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fullpage}
\begin{document}

\begin{tabular}{p{7cm}p{7cm}}
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Ut purus elit,
vestibulum ut, placerat ac, adipiscing vitae, felis. Curabitur dictum
gravida mauris. Nam arcu libero, nonummy eget, consectetuer id,
vulputate a, magna. Donec vehicula augue eu neque. Pellentesque habitant
morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas.
Mauris ut leo. Cras viverra metus rhoncus sem. Nulla et lectus
vestibulum urna fringilla ultrices. Phasellus eu tellus sit amet tortor
gravida placerat. Integer sapien est, iaculis in, pretium quis, viverra
ac, nunc. Praesent eget sem vel leo ultrices bibendum. Aenean faucibus.
Morbi dolor nulla, malesuada eu, pulvinar at, mollis ac, nulla.
Curabitur auctor semper nulla. Donec varius orci eget risus. Duis nibh
mi, congue eu, accumsan eleifend, sagittis quis, diam. Duis eget orci
sit amet orci dignissim rutrum.

Nam dui ligula, fringilla a, euismod sodales, sollicitudin vel, wisi.
Morbi auctor lorem non justo. Nam lacus libero, pretium at, lobortis
vitae, ultricies et, tellus. Donec aliquet, tortor sed accumsan
bibendum, erat ligula aliquet magna, vitae ornare odio metus a mi. Morbi
ac orci et nisl hendrerit mollis. Suspendisse ut massa. Cras nec ante.
Pellentesque a nulla. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis
parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Aliquam tincidunt urna. Nulla
ullamcorper vestibulum turpis. Pellentesque cursus luctus mauris.
&
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Ut purus elit,
vestibulum ut, placerat ac, adipiscing vitae, felis. Curabitur dictum
gravida mauris. Nam arcu libero, nonummy eget, consectetuer id,
vulputate a, magna. Donec vehicula augue eu neque. Pellentesque habitant
morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas.
Mauris ut leo. Cras viverra metus rhoncus sem. Nulla et lectus
vestibulum urna fringilla ultrices. Phasellus eu tellus sit amet tortor
gravida placerat. Integer sapien est, iaculis in, pretium quis, viverra
ac, nunc. Praesent eget sem vel leo ultrices bibendum. Aenean faucibus.
Morbi dolor nulla, malesuada eu, pulvinar at, mollis ac, nulla.
Curabitur auctor semper nulla. Donec varius orci eget risus. Duis nibh
mi, congue eu, accumsan eleifend, sagittis quis, diam. Duis eget orci
sit amet orci dignissim rutrum.

Nam dui ligula, fringilla a, euismod sodales, sollicitudin vel, wisi.
Morbi auctor lorem non justo. Nam lacus libero, pretium at, lobortis
vitae, ultricies et, tellus. Donec aliquet, tortor sed accumsan
bibendum, erat ligula aliquet magna, vitae ornare odio metus a mi. Morbi
ac orci et nisl hendrerit mollis. Suspendisse ut massa. Cras nec ante.
Pellentesque a nulla. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis
parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Aliquam tincidunt urna. Nulla
ullamcorper vestibulum turpis. Pellentesque cursus luctus mauris.
\end{tabular}
\end{document}

By default there's no first-line-indent, so the appearance should be identical to as if \newline is used.

---

Another solution: \shortstack (similar to the nested-tabular solution this does not require specifying explicit width)

Answer 23

It's been a long time, but now you can just use Optex without any packages:

\thistable{\tabskipl=0pt plus1fil \tabskipr=\tabskipl} % center the able
\table{p{5cm\fC}c}{%\fC centers cell
\crll
Here\break we have a broken line & As we want\crll
}

         
\bye