How to change a whole row of a table

Each cell of a table is set in a box, so that a change of font style (or whatever) only lasts to the end of the cell. If one has a many-celled table, or a long one which needs lots of rows emphasising, putting a font style change command in every cell will be impossibly tedious.

With the array package, you can define column modifiers which will change the font style for a whole column. However, with a bit of subtlety, one can make such modifiers affect rows rather than columns. So, we set things up by:

\usepackage{array}
\newcolumntype{$}{>{\global\let\currentrowstyle\relax}}
\newcolumntype{^}{>{\currentrowstyle}}
\newcommand{\rowstyle}[1]{\gdef\currentrowstyle{#1}%
  #1\ignorespaces
}

Now, we put $ before the first column specifier; and we put ^ before the modifiers of subsequent ones. We then use \rowstyle at the start of each row we want to modify:

\begin{tabular}{|$l|^l|^l|}   \hline
  \rowstyle{\bfseries}
  Heading & Big and & Bold \\ \hline
  Meek & mild & entry      \\
  Meek & mild & entry      \\
  \rowstyle{\itshape}
  Strange & and & italic   \\
  Meek & mild & entry      \\ \hline
\end{tabular}

The array package works with several other tabular-like environments from other packages (for example longtable), but unfortunately this trick won’t always work.

FAQ ID: Q-wholerow
Tags: tables–figures