Color Schemes for Tables in Documentation

[Jonathan West]

> * For tables in documentation, are color schemes purely a matter of
> personal taste?

It depends. If there is a corporate identity guide, it may well be
that the choice of colors for tables is defined there. Since a large
amount of my work consists of creating templates for companies who are
rebranding, I run into these quite a lot.

> Or are there any color schemes that are commonly used
> and accepted?

There are a great variety. broadly the following categories are the most common.

- Grid. Thin black borders round every cell.

- Lines. Horizontal borders between each row, but no vertical borders.
Borders are usually but not always black.

- Horizontal stripes. Heading row is white text against corporate
colour background. Alternate rows different lighter shades of
corporate colour or white and a light shade. Might have vertical
borders but not necessarily. Horizontal borders almost always absent.

There are of course many variations, but these are the three basic themes.

>
> * What color schemes do you use in tables?

Whatever I'm asked to use. Normally, I define a set of styles in Word
for use in tables, and change the style definition to whetver the
customer wants. That way, I can have the same familiar style names
everywhere, and also have tables formatted the way the customer wants.

Regards
Jonathan West