How to write and publish a scientific paper - Barbara Gastel, Robert A. Day 2022

Titles, footnotes, and abbreviations
How to design effective tables
Preparing the tables and figures

The title of the table (or the legend of a figure) is like the title of the paper itself. That is, the title or legend should be concise and generally not divided into two or more clauses or sentences. Unnecessary words should be omitted.

Give careful thought to the footnotes to your tables. If abbreviations must be defined, you often can give all or most of the definitions in the first table. Then, later tables can carry the simple footnote: “Abbreviations as in Table 1.”

Note that “temp” (Tables 16.1, 16.2, 16.6, and 16.7) is used as an abbreviation for “temperature.” Because of space limitations in tables, almost all journals encourage abbreviating certain words in tables that would not be abbreviated in the text. Capitalize any such abbreviations used as the first word in a column heading; do not use periods (except after “No.,” which might be misread without the period). To identify abbreviations that your target journal considers acceptable in tables, you can look at tables published in the journal. Also, some journals list in their instructions to authors the abbreviations that can be used without definition in tables that they publish.