Data Table Design

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---
name: Data Table Design
description: Design tables that communicate clearly — alignment, consistent precision, meaningful sort order, and well-placed totals. Use when presenting tabular data where a misread number has real consequences.
---

# Data Table Design

A table is not a spreadsheet dump. Every formatting choice either helps or hinders the reader's ability to compare, rank, and interpret values.

## Alignment

- Right-align all numeric columns without exception — alignment makes magnitude visible at a glance
- Left-align text columns
- Center column headers only when the column is narrow and centering does not create visual disconnection from the values below
- Never mix alignments within a single column

## Numeric precision

Consistency within a column matters more than absolute precision. Rules:
- Currency: two decimal places for unit prices; zero for large aggregates (1,240,000 not 1,240,000.00)
- Percentages: one decimal place unless the context is scientific
- Large numbers: use K, M, B suffixes with a note of the unit in the header rather than printing eight digits
- If a column mixes values at different scales (some in thousands, one in millions), flag the outlier with a footnote rather than changing the column format

Never imply false precision — round to the significant figures the data actually supports.… install to load the full skill