How to Create an HTML Table

HTML tables are created with the <table>, <thead>, <tbody>, <tfoot>, <tr>, <th>, <td>, and <caption> tags.

1. Start by typing <table></table> to create the shell for the table.
2. Tables can optionally be broken into a head, body and foot, using the <thead>, <tbody>, and <tfoot> tags, like this:

   <table>
     <thead><!--row will go here--></thead><tbody><!--row will go here--></tbody><tfoot><!--row will go here--></tfoot>
   </table>

3. The table rows go within the <thead>, <tbody>, and <tfoot> tags if they exist or directly within the <table> tag if they don't.

   Option 1

   <table>
     <thead>
       <tr><!--cells will go here--></tr>
     </thead>
     <tbody>
       <tr><!--cells will go here--></tr>
     </tbody>
     <tfoot>
       <tr><!--cells will go here--></tr>
     </tfoot>
   </table>

   Option 2

   <table>
       <tr><!--cells will go here--></tr><tr><!--cells will go here--></tr>
   </table>

4. There are two types of table cells: headers and data, which go in <th> and <td> tags, respectively:

   <table>
     <thead>
       <tr>
         <th>Header</th>
         <th>Header</th>
         <th>Header</th>
       </tr>
     </thead>
     <tbody>
       <tr>
         <td>Data</td>
         <td>Data</td>
         <td>Data</td>
       </tr>
     </tbody>
     <tfoot>
       <tr>
         <td>Data</td>
         <td>Data</td>
         <td>Data</td>
       </tr>
     </tfoot>
   </table>

5. If you like, you can add a caption with the </caption> tag:

   <table>
     <caption>Caption Goes Here</caption>
     <thead>
       <tr>
         <th>Header</th>
         <th>Header</th>
         <th>Header</th>
       </tr>
     </thead>
     <tbody>
       <tr>
         <td>Data</td>
         <td>Data</td>
         <td>Data</td>
       </tr>
     </tbody>
     <tfoot>
       <tr>
         <td>Data</td>
         <td>Data</td>
         <td>Data</td>
       </tr>
     </tfoot>
   </table>

At this point, you have a very basic table that looks like this (without the blue border):

You'll probably want to style it with borders, backgrounds, spacing and margins. All that should be done with CSS as the HTML attributes for formatting tables are all deprecated.