rowspans and colspans merge the specified number of cells vertically or horizontally
<?xml version = "1.0"?> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> <html xmlns = "http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title> - Tables</title> </head> <body> <table border = "1"> <thead> <tr> <!-- merge two rows --> <th rowspan = "2"> Picture </th> <!-- merge four columns --> <th colspan = "4" valign = "top"> <h1>this is a test. </h1><br /> </th> </tr> <tr valign = "bottom"> <th>#</th> <th>I</th> <th>S</th> <th>P</th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr> <th>C</th> <td>2</td> <td>A</td> <td rowspan = "2">L</td> <td rowspan = "2">L</td> </tr> <tr> <th>L</th> <td>1</td> <td>A</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </body> </html>