Is there a way to set the text alignment of entire column in a table?

While not particularly elegant, I like to toss something like this in my site-wide css file:

.tr1 td:nth-child(1), .tr1 th:nth-child(1),
.tr2 td:nth-child(2), .tr2 th:nth-child(2),
.tr3 td:nth-child(3), .tr3 th:nth-child(3),
.tr4 td:nth-child(4), .tr4 th:nth-child(4),
.tr5 td:nth-child(5), .tr5 th:nth-child(5),
.tr6 td:nth-child(6), .tr6 th:nth-child(6),
.tr7 td:nth-child(7), .tr7 th:nth-child(7),
.tr8 td:nth-child(8), .tr8 th:nth-child(8),
.tr9 td:nth-child(9), .tr9 th:nth-child(9) { text-align:right }

.tc1 td:nth-child(1), .tc1 th:nth-child(1),
.tc2 td:nth-child(2), .tc2 th:nth-child(2),
.tc3 td:nth-child(3), .tc3 th:nth-child(3),
.tc4 td:nth-child(4), .tc4 th:nth-child(4),
.tc5 td:nth-child(5), .tc5 th:nth-child(5),
.tc6 td:nth-child(6), .tc6 th:nth-child(6),
.tc7 td:nth-child(7), .tc7 th:nth-child(7),
.tc8 td:nth-child(8), .tc8 th:nth-child(8),
.tc9 td:nth-child(9), .tc9 th:nth-child(9) { text-align:center }

Then just specify which column numbers you want center or right aligned, i.e. if you want column 2 & 7 right aligned, and 3 centered, just do:

<table class="tr2 tc3 tr7">

While the CSS isn't super elegant, the alternatives are even less elegant: i.e. a custom class for each table, or requiring each tr to have a class="ralign" or similar.

Doesn't work with IE8

Add a class to every cell in the 2nd column.

.second {
   text-align: right;
}

You could also use CSS3.

tr td:nth-child(2) { /* I don't think they are 0 based */
   text-align: right;
}

(It won't work in <= IE8)