Before creating a table, first of all a sketch on paper has to be made, how should we otherwise know the amount of columns and rules. Let's give an overview of the planned and realized production of "LovelyMaps" over the year 1997, giving a division into the tourist maps and other types of maps produced for different companies.

The title and heading
Let us place a title under the table. For this we use the special tag set <caption>and </caption>, to be placed directly after the <table> tag. On default the title will be placed at the top of the table, here it has to be at the bottom, so the description is <caption align="bottom">.

What also is needed are headings, at the top and at the left. The heading has these set of tags: <th> and </th>. The first table cell we have to define is the cell that covers two rows, this has to be added in the first table definition tag, with the description <td rowspan="2">. Since the table is empty, contains no information, a <br> tag has to be included between the <td> tag set. The definition of the first table cell is:
<td rowspan="2"><br></td>.
The first two headings we encounter have to cover two columns and are therefore defined in the first two table heading definitions <th colspan="2">offered</th> and <th colspan="2">produced</th>.
After this the second table rule is added with the four entries. The text will be placed horizontally, we have no option to rotate the text. Next the following two table rules will follow.

Colouring-in the tables
A final make-up is adding colour to the whole table, the lines or the different cells. A general rule is: do not use too much of everything, keep it simple. The defintion to be used is bgcolor="#RRGGBB". Depending on in which <tag> the definition is placed, the colour will be added to the whole table, a table rule or a table cell. Used for this example is the colour "#FFFF99". In the chapter about images colour notation will be explained in more detail.