# What's the easiest way to create a couple columns in a post?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-easiest-way-to-create-a-couple-columns-in-a-post/668052
**Category:** About This Message Board
**Created:** [September 5, 2013, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-easiest-way-to-create-a-couple-columns-in-a-post/668052 "2013-09-05T04:39:42Z")
**Posts on this page:** 6
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2013, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-easiest-way-to-create-a-couple-columns-in-a-post/668052/1 "2013-09-05T04:39:42Z")
Tabs don’t work. Multiple spaces get compressed into one. How in the world do you get a couple columns in a post? I’ve been resorting to …
Bob…Author
Jonathan…Actor
Jason…Musician
looks like pretty bad because it doesn’t always line up evenly. I don’t know what else to do. This board doesn’t seem to recognize bbcode for tables.
This was generated with a Free BBCode Table Generator and this board doesn’t recognize it. Is there some customized code I need?
What does work here?
```
[th]Name[/th]
[th]Occupation[/th]
Tom
author
Bill
actor
George
musician
Bobby
actor
```
---
### Author:  [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2013, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-easiest-way-to-create-a-couple-columns-in-a-post/668052/2 "2013-09-05T04:43:00Z")
```auto
Bob Author
Tom Actor
Jason Musician
```
There’s Code tags, you’re still not going to get everything to line up with these fonts, but it’ll preserve the spaces.
ETA, it took some playing to get it lined up even that well (and it probably doesn’t like the same on every screen/browser). You can hit the quote button on my post to see exactly what I did if you need to.
---
### Author:  [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2013, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-easiest-way-to-create-a-couple-columns-in-a-post/668052/3 "2013-09-05T04:50:36Z")
That’s an improvement over … the code tags may be the easiest solution.
Thanks
---
### Author:  [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2013, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-easiest-way-to-create-a-couple-columns-in-a-post/668052/4 "2013-09-05T04:56:55Z")
I construct the table in Excel, add code tags, and mess around with it. I usually end up doing further work in a text editor, IIRC. Here’s one example from an old thread:
```auto
Q7 (Figure 4) had Paid
contact bribe product
Education system 29% 11% 0.033
Judicial System 13% 15% 0.020
Medical and health services 56% 6% 0.032
Police 20% 7% 0.014
Registry and permit service 21% 14% 0.029
Utilities 52% 6% 0.030
Tax 28% 9% 0.025
Land Services 16% 17% 0.027
sum 0.210
```
Quote the post and paste the above into a text editor that displays tabs and spaces and you can see my work.
---
### Author:  [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2013, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-easiest-way-to-create-a-couple-columns-in-a-post/668052/5 "2013-09-05T05:21:45Z")
Stuff within code tags is displayed in a fixed-width font, so you can use blank spaces to line things up in columns, and it will be perfectly predictable, presumably for all browsers.
The only problem is, while you are typing it all into the edit window, it’s displayed in the usual font, which is not fixed-width. So you have to count the blank spaces very carefully.
Better method: Fire up any plain-old-plain-text editor of your choice, and compose your table there. Then go into the VBulletin text input window, and cut-and-paste your table from the plain-old-plain-text editor to there. Surround your table with
[noparse]
```auto
. . . .
. . . .
. . . .
```
[/noparse]
tags.
---
### Author:  [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2013, 7:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-easiest-way-to-create-a-couple-columns-in-a-post/668052/6 "2013-09-05T07:16:55Z")
Easy enough. I’ll use Notepad to compose the table and then paste into code tags. Thanks.