When we define a table in Asciidoctor we might want to span a cell over multiple columns or rows, instead of just a single column or row. We can do this using a cell specifier with the following format: column-span.row-span+. The values for column-span and row-span define the number of columns and rows the cell must span. We put the cell specifier before the pipe symbol (|) in our table definition.

In the following example Asciidoctor markup we have three tables. In the first table we span a cell over 2 columns, the second table spans a cell over 2 rows and in the final table we span a cell over both 2 columns and rows.

== Table cell span

.Cell spans columns
|===
| Name | Description

| Asciidoctor
| Awesome way to write documentation

// This cell spans 2 columns, indicated
// by the number before the + sign.
// The + sign
// tells Asciidoctor to span this
// cell over multiple columns.
2+| The statements above say it all

|===


.Cell spans rows
|===
| Name | Description

// This cell spans 2 rows,
// because the number after
// the dot (.) specifies the number
// of rows to span. The + sign
// tells Asciidoctor to span this
// cell over multiple rows.
.2+| Asciidoctor
| Awesome way to write documentation

| Works on the JVM

|===


.Cell spans both rows and columns
|===
| Col1 | Col2 | Col 3

// We can combine the numbers for
// row and column span within one
// cell specifier.
// The number before the dot (.)
// is the number of columns to span,
// the number after the dot (.)
// is the number of rows to span.
2.2+| Cell spans 2 cols, 2 rows
| Row 1, Col 3

| Row 2, Col 3

|===

If we transform our source to HTML we get the following tables:

Written with Asciidoctor 1.5.1.

Original article