Table Groups and Merged Cells

What Is It?

Sometimes one cell needs to cover more than one column or row.

What the Tags Mean

• colspan: number of columns a cell covers.
• rowspan: number of rows a cell covers.
• thead: header rows.
• tbody: main rows.
• tfoot: summary rows.
• colgroup and col: column groups.

Example 1

Save each example as index.html and open it in your browser. Each code block is a complete page.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
  <meta charset="UTF-8">
  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
  <title>Table Groups and Merged Cells</title>
 
</head>
<body>
<table style="border: 1px solid gray">
  <tr><th colspan="2">Monday</th></tr>
  <tr><td>Morning</td><td>Reading</td></tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>

What you see: Monday covers both columns in the first row.

Example 2: Another Use

Use rowspan for a value shared by two rows.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
  <meta charset="UTF-8">
  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
  <title>Table Groups and Merged Cells</title>
 
</head>
<body>
<table style="border: 1px solid gray">
  <tr><th rowspan="2">Monday</th><td>Reading</td></tr>
  <tr><td>Writing</td></tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>

Simple Tip

Do not add another cell where a spanning cell already fills the space. Use CSS borders in your finished page.

Try It Yourself

Change the activities in the rowspan example.