Btukfyl

begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|}

Column 1 & Column 2 & column3 \

hline

second row & & \

hline

end{tabular}

How do I change the border style? Using | I can draw thin solid vertical lines and hline draws thin solid horizontal lines. I would like a thick outer border and thin dotted lines of various sizes and colors in the table. In short I would like to achieve similar functionality of attached screenshot of MS word table options in LaTeX. Also the reason for asking this is to put all table borders related answers in one place.

Thanks for your help.

documentclass{article}

usepackage{array,booktabs,arydshln,xcolor}

newcommandVRule[1][arrayrulewidth]{vrule width #1}



begin{document}



begin{tabular}{!{VRule[2pt]}c!{VRule}c!{color{red}VRule[3pt]}c!{VRule}}

Column 1 & Column 2 & column3 \specialrule{3pt}{0pt}{0pt}

second row & & \hdashline

third row  & & \specialrule{4pt}{0pt}{0pt}

end{tabular}



end{document}

Here are a few table layouts, with my favourite one last.

documentclass{article}

usepackage{xcolor}

usepackage{booktabs}

begin{document}

    begin{tabular}{p{6cm}p{6cm}}

        begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|}

        hline

        Column 1 & Column 2 & Column 3 \

        hline

        second row & & \

        hline

        third row & & \

        hline

        end{tabular}

        &

        begin{tabular}{ccc}

        Column 1 & Column 2 & Column 3 \

        hline

        second row & & \

        hline

        third row & & \

        hline

        end{tabular}

        \[5em]

        begin{tabular}{|ccc|}

        hline

        Column 1 & Column 2 & Column 3 \

        hline

        second row & & \

        third row & & \

        hline

        end{tabular}

        &

        begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|}

        hline

        Column 1 & Column 2 & Column 3 \

        hline

        second row & & \

        third row & & \

        hline

        end{tabular}

        \[5em]

        begin{tabular}{ccc}

        Column 1 & Column 2 & Column 3 \

        second row & & \

        third row & & 

        end{tabular}

        &

        begin{tabular}{lll}

        toprule

        Column 1 & Column 2 & Column 3 \

        midrule

        second row & & \

        third row & & \

        bottomrule

        end{tabular}

        \[5em]

        % Colour for the rulings in tables:

        makeatletter

           defrulecolor#1#{CT@arc{#1}}

           defCT@arc#1#2{%

           ifdimbaselineskip=z@noalignfi

           {gdefCT@arc@{color#1{#2}}}}

           letCT@arc@relax

          rulecolor{gray!50}

        makeatother

        begin{tabular}{@{}lll@{}}

        toprule

        Column 1 & Column 2 & Column 3 \

        midrule

        second row & & \

        third row & & \

        bottomrule

        end{tabular}

   end{tabular}

end{document}

There is the hhline package and the arydshln package. You can get colour in the table with the xcolor package.

You might have your reasons to typeset your tables with many different line styles... I'd usually recommend to avoid vertical lines at all and to draw horizontal lines with commands provided by the booktabs package.

In case you are writing something related to science, more or less all textbooks seem to roughly follow similar guidelines. Rarely you will find a vertical line.

You can use all the flexibility permitted by LaTeX:

usepackage{arydshln}

...



begin{table}[h]

begin{tabular}{lll}

multicolumn{1}{c}{textbf{Title 1}} &  & multicolumn{1}{c}{textbf{Title 2}} \

cline{1-1} cline{3-3}

multicolumn{1}{|l|}{Cell 1} & & multicolumn{1}{|l|}{Cell 2} \

cdashline{3-3}

multicolumn{1}{|l|}{Cell 3} & & multicolumn{1}{|l|}{Cell 4} \

cline{3-3}

multicolumn{1}{|l|}{Cell 5} & & \

cline{1-1}

end{tabular}

end{table}

The result is: