Changing the font size in a table
Scale down your table to the textwidth
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\begin{document}
\begin{table}
\resizebox{\textwidth}{!}{%
\begin{tabular}{cc}
Knuth & Lamport
\end{tabular}}
\end{table}
\end{document}
then you have the optimal font size. However, all tabular lines are also scaled down which doesn't matter because it looks nicer.
Write \tiny
immediately after \begin{table}
. If you don't use a (floating) table
environment, enclose your (e.g.) tabular
environment in a group and write \tiny
after \begingroup
.
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\begin{table}
\tiny
\centering
\begin{tabular}{cc}
Knuth & Lamport
\end{tabular}
\end{table}
\end{document}
EDIT: To change the fontsize for all tables (or even floats of every type), one may use the floatrow
package (this also saves typing \centering
in every table):
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{floatrow}
\DeclareFloatFont{tiny}{\tiny}% "scriptsize" is defined by floatrow, "tiny" not
\floatsetup[table]{font=tiny}
\begin{document}
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{cc}
Knuth & Lamport
\end{tabular}
\end{table}
\end{document}