Wide Tables

The following table overflows into the blocks on the right hand side of the page (if you don't the overflow effect, try sizing your browser window down).

Surname	Forename	Age	Sex	Relation to head	Religion	Birthplace	Occupation	Literacy	Irish Language	Marital Status	Specified Illnesses	Years Married	Children Born	Children Living
O Rielly	Daniel	58	Male	Head of Family	Roman Catholic	Co Cork	Farmer	Read and write	Irish and English	Married	-	-	-	-
O Rielly	Margaret	55	Female	Wife	Roman Catholic	Co Cork	-	Read and write	Irish and English	Married	-	27	7	7
O Rielly	Julia	26	Female	Daughter	Roman Catholic	Co Cork	Farmers Daughter	Read and write	Irish and English	Single	-	-	-	-
O Rielly	Michael	24	Male	Son	Roman Catholic	Co Cork	Farmers Son	Read and write	English	Single	-	-	-	-
O Rielly	Mary Anne	22	Female	Daughter	Roman Catholic	Co Cork	Farmers son	Read and write	Irish and English	Single	-	-	-	-
O Rielly	Catherine	16	Female	Daughter	Roman Catholic	Co Cork	Scholar	Read and write	Irish and English	Single	-	-	-	-
O Rielly	Daniel	14	Male	Son	Roman Catholic	Co Cork	Scholar	Read and write	Irish and English	-	-	-	-	-

A solution to the overflow problem:

Tables are produced with Wiki markup:

{| class="wikitable" Border="1"
:
|}

Wrapping the table markup in a <div> as follows can be used to cause scrolling to occur when the table would otherwise overflow:

<div style="overflow-y:auto;">
{| class="wikitable" Border="1"
:
|}
</div>

The following is the same table as above, but wrapped in a div as described:

Surname	Forename	Age	Sex	Relation to head	Religion	Birthplace	Occupation	Literacy	Irish Language	Marital Status	Specified Illnesses	Years Married	Children Born	Children Living
O Rielly	Daniel	58	Male	Head of Family	Roman Catholic	Co Cork	Farmer	Read and write	Irish and English	Married	-	-	-	-
O Rielly	Margaret	55	Female	Wife	Roman Catholic	Co Cork	-	Read and write	Irish and English	Married	-	27	7	7
O Rielly	Julia	26	Female	Daughter	Roman Catholic	Co Cork	Farmers Daughter	Read and write	Irish and English	Single	-	-	-	-
O Rielly	Michael	24	Male	Son	Roman Catholic	Co Cork	Farmers Son	Read and write	English	Single	-	-	-	-
O Rielly	Mary Anne	22	Female	Daughter	Roman Catholic	Co Cork	Farmers son	Read and write	Irish and English	Single	-	-	-	-
O Rielly	Catherine	16	Female	Daughter	Roman Catholic	Co Cork	Scholar	Read and write	Irish and English	Single	-	-	-	-
O Rielly	Daniel	14	Male	Son	Roman Catholic	Co Cork	Scholar	Read and write	Irish and English	-	-	-	-	-

The above is an improvement - the table content no longer overflows to the right - instead a horizontal scrollbar is provided (when necessary) to scroll the table horizontally.

Two basic enhancements to any Census Table:

Consider adding caption text to the table (using "|+ " - see below). This is good practice because a caption (besides providing information to the fully-sighted reader) makes the table more accessible to screen reader software used by people with limited or no sight. For further info see the W3C Web Accessability Initiative tutorial on table captions.
Consider slighty decreasing the font-size for a wide table. This shows more of the table at a glance before the user needs to start scrolling (if you've implemented scrolling as above) and may sometimes prevent to need to scroll entirely because the entire table might be fully viewable without scrolling. A reduction of 10% in font-size is probably optimal.

<div style="overflow-y:auto;">
{| class="wikitable" Border="1" style="font-size:0.9em;"
|+ style="text-align: left;" | Ireland Census 1911 - Residents of a house 7 in Garraneanasig (Coolmain, Cork)
:
|}
</div>

Note: ' style="text-align: left;" |' before the caption text is optional.

The following is again the the same table, with these changes incorporated:

Ireland Census 1911 - Residents of a house 7 in Garraneanasig (Coolmain, Cork)
Surname	Forename	Age	Sex	Relation to head	Religion	Birthplace	Occupation	Literacy	Irish Language	Marital Status	Specified Illnesses	Years Married	Children Born	Children Living
O Rielly	Daniel	58	Male	Head of Family	Roman Catholic	Co Cork	Farmer	Read and write	Irish and English	Married	-	-	-	-
O Rielly	Margaret	55	Female	Wife	Roman Catholic	Co Cork	-	Read and write	Irish and English	Married	-	27	7	7
O Rielly	Julia	26	Female	Daughter	Roman Catholic	Co Cork	Farmers Daughter	Read and write	Irish and English	Single	-	-	-	-
O Rielly	Michael	24	Male	Son	Roman Catholic	Co Cork	Farmers Son	Read and write	English	Single	-	-	-	-
O Rielly	Mary Anne	22	Female	Daughter	Roman Catholic	Co Cork	Farmers son	Read and write	Irish and English	Single	-	-	-	-
O Rielly	Catherine	16	Female	Daughter	Roman Catholic	Co Cork	Scholar	Read and write	Irish and English	Single	-	-	-	-
O Rielly	Daniel	14	Male	Son	Roman Catholic	Co Cork	Scholar	Read and write	Irish and English	-	-	-	-	-

N.B. The <div> tag is NOT on the Wikitree list of recommended tags, and the overflow problem cannot be resolved without using a <div> tag as described above (or a similar approach).

When editing free-space profiles (and private profiles), users have more creative freedom to use <div> tags etc. For further information, see Help:HTML and Inline CSS

A personal opinion: For the above reason (and many other reasons), I do NOT enter "Census Tables" on individual profile pages, but create a free-space profile to house the census table. Then, on the profile of each individual mentioned on the census record a link can be made to the free-space page.

The above census table (with minor changes - see "Minor Changes" below ) can be seen in use in this free-space profile.

Minor Changes:

I amalgamated Forename and Surname columns into a single column ("Name) so that I could more easily link back to profiles of individuals appearing in the census table.

Through a bit of "div" wizardry, I've placed the horizontal scrollbar at the top, rather than at the bottom (default). I am not sure yet if this is entirely advisable so I've not included details here of how I did this.

Note:

On the free-space profile I've included a link to the page I transcribed/ copy-pasted information from, also a link to the original image of the original scanned document - probably best practice.

Collaboration on Wide Tables

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Public Comments: Login to post. (Best for messages specifically directed to those editing this profile. Limit 20 per day.)
Public Q&A: These will appear above and in the Genealogist-to-Genealogist (G2G) Forum. (Best for anything directed to the wider genealogy community.)

Memories of Wide Tables

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