\
strut
command, that defines a space appropriate
to the current size of the text; placing a \
strut
command at the
end of a troublesome row is the simplest solution to the problem —
if it works. Other solutions below are LaTeX-specific, but some
may be simply translated to Plain TeX commands.
If your table exhibits a systematic problem (i.e., every row is wrong
by the same amount) use \
extrarowheight
, which is defined by the
array package:
\usepackage{array}% in the preamble ... \setlength{\extrarowheight}{length} \begin{tabular}{....}
To correct a single row whose maladjustment isn’t corrected by a
\
strut
command, you can define your own, using
\
rule{0pt}{length}
— which is a near approximation to the
command that goes inside a \
strut
. The bigstrut package
defines a strut command that you can use for this purpose:
\
bigstrut
on its own opens up both above and below the current
line; \
bigstrut[t]
opens up above the line,
\
bigstrut[b]
opens up below the line.
General solutions are available, however. The tabls package
automatically generates an appropriately-sized strut at the end of
each row. Its disadvantages are that it’s really rather slow in
operation (since it gets in the way of everything within tables) and
its (lack of) compatibility with other packages.
The cellspace package does a (possibly inferior) job by
defining a new table/array column type “S”, which you apply to each
column specification. So, for example,
\cmdinvoke{begin}{tabular}{l l l p{3cm}}
would become
\cmdinvoke{begin}{tabular}{Sl Sl Sl Sp{3cm}}
and so on. This technique shows promise of not interfering so much with other packages, but this author has heard of no reports from the field.
The booktabs package comes with a thought-provoking essay about how tables should be designed. Since table row-spacing problems most often appear in collisions with rules, the author’s thesis, that LaTeX users tend too often to rule their tables, is interesting. The package provides rule commands to support the author’s scheme, but deals with inter-row spacing too. The most recent release of booktabs sports compatibility with packages such as longtable. Documentation of both bigstrut and tabls may be found as comments in the package files themselves.This question on the Web: http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=struttab