25.15.5 Cell Justification

The command M-x table-justify imposes justification on one or more cells in a text-based table. Justification determines how the text in the cell is aligned, relative to the edges of the cell. Each cell in a table can be separately justified.

M-x table-justify first prompts for what to justify; the options are ‘cell’ (just the current cell), ‘column’ (all cells in the current table column) and ‘row’ (all cells in the current table row). The command then prompts for the justification style; the options are left, center, right, top, middle, bottom, or none (meaning no vertical justification).

Horizontal and vertical justification styles are specified independently, and both types can be in effect simultaneously; for instance, you can call M-x table-justify twice, once to specify right justification and once to specify bottom justification, to align the contents of a cell to the bottom right.

The justification style is stored in the buffer as a text property, and is lost when you kill the buffer or exit Emacs. However, the table recognition commands, such as M-x table-recognize (see Table Recognition), attempt to determine and re-apply each cell’s justification style, by examining its contents. To disable this feature, change the variable table-detect-cell-alignment to nil.