Markdown Tables: A Quick Reference

Tables are one of the most useful parts of GitHub-flavored Markdown, and one of the easiest to get wrong by hand. Here's the syntax, start to finish.

Basic syntax

| Name  | Role      | Location |
| ----- | --------- | -------- |
| Ana   | Engineer  | Remote   |
| Priya | Designer  | Berlin   |

The header row, the separator row (---), and each data row all need the same number of |-delimited columns.

Aligning columns

Add colons to the separator row to control alignment:

Common mistakes

1. Mismatched column counts — every row needs the same number of pipes as the header.
2. Missing the separator row — without it, most renderers won't treat the block as a table at all.
3. Unescaped pipes in cell content — write \| if a cell needs a literal pipe character.

Because MDViewerOnline renders as you type, mistakes like these show up immediately in the preview pane instead of after you've published somewhere else.