Every statistical table should have a number and a title. Number your tables in the order in which you cite them in your report, paper or document. A period should follow the number. Make the title concise and no longer than two lines at most. It should be briefly descriptive, referring only to the salient elements in your table. Follow the rules of the organization for which you are writing when deciding on the style and capitalization of your title. The Chicago Manual of Style, for example, advises sentence-style capitalization without a period at the end. A typical title in this style would be, "Rate of non-specific species failure during drought."
Headings and subheadings identify and order the columns under which data will be presented in the body of your statistical table. They are perhaps the most important part of the table because without them, the data they introduce are meaningless. Use key words in your headings to describe the data and make each heading no wider than the column below it. Each heading should also be singular unless the data it introduces is plural. Column headings typically stand above statistical data ordered vertically below them. Each one should be centered on the longest line of data below it. When a column heading refers to more than one column, it is called a column spanner. A line below the spanner, called a divider, extends across the tops of the columns the spanner refers to in order to make the connection between the columns and the column spanner clear. A column spanner is also known as a wafer heading. Column spanners may include units relevant to the data, for example, "Blue-beaked finch death rate increase."
If your statistical table has a column at the far left, this column is called a stub and its heading is called a stub head. A stub entry often contains categorical information describing the data in the table body to its right. The stub should line up horizontally with the data to which it refers. If the stub entry is more than one line long, the body data to which it refers is generally aligned with the last line of the stub. However, if both stub entry and the columns of data it identifies occupy more than one line, the first lines of the stub and the data should be aligned.
The body of your statistical table presents the data gathered from your study or analysis. It is to the right of the stub, if your table has one, and under the column headings, subheadings and spanners. Each data column in the body should present the same category of information. Percentages, for example, should occupy one column and frequencies another. If you wish to distinguish between different data groups while maintaining the same column headings, use a table spanner and divider. A table spanner is simply a subheading in the table body. It is followed by a divider that spans the table. Unlike the main headings and subheadings of a table, table spanners may be plural.
Table notes are necessary if there is anything in your statistical table that may not be clear to your reader at first glance. If the table requires notes applicable to the entire table, place these notes under a divider marking the bottom of the table. Precede them with a colon and the word "Note." For example: "Note: Data unavailable during May-June of alternate years." If you are writing for a journal in which statistical studies are common, you may not need to identify such common abbreviations, but more esoteric acronyms and terms should be identified. To do this, place an asterisk (*) after the term to be defined, then place a second asterisk under the last of your general notes and in line with the word "Note" above. Follow this asterisk with an explanatory phrase, for example, "*Mean loss figures exclude non-native species." If you have other data- or column-specific notes to add, use two asterisks, three asterisks, then single and stacked crosses, in this order. Each symbol and explanatory text should reside on its own line.